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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. <£>/ 
Shelf . Q- 7 



§- — — — 

ft UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



\ 



THE MONTH OF MAM, 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF 

/ ,v' ■ " 

AfaiATRY, 

PRIEST OP THR ORATORY OF THE IMMACULATE COKCRPTIOH, 



AN INTRODUCTION, 

BT TS8 

VERY REV- F. W. FABER, D. R, 

OF THE LONDON ORATORY. 



With the Approbation op the Most Ret. F. P. Khnbick, 
Archbishop op Baltimore. 

BALTIMORE: . :$>J 



■ 



KELLY, P1ET Sc CO.. 

174 -Baltimore Street. 
1 870. 




Thb Library 



WASHINGTON 



CONTEN-TS. 



limitation. Page. 

1. — Lord, have mercy upon us 5 Christ, have mercy 

upon us ; Lord, have mercy upon us 1 

II. — Christ, hear us ! Christ, graciously hear us. God 
the Father of heaven, have mercy on us ! God 
the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy 
on us. God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us. 

Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us 5 

IH. — Holy Mary, pray for us ! Holy Mother of God, 

pray for us.. 10 

IV. — Mother of divine grace, pray for us 16 

Y. — Help of Christians, pray for us 20 

VI. — Queen, conceived without sin, pray for us 26 

VII. — Queen, conceived without sin, pray for us 31 

VIII. — Queen, conceived without sin, pray for us 37 

IX. — Mother, most pure, pray for us 44 

X. — Mother Immaculate, pray for us 52 

XI. — Queen, clothed with the sun, pray for us 58 

XII. — Queen of ages, pray for us 68 

XIH. — Queen of the age, pray for us 81 

XIV. — Queen of doctors, pray for us 92 

XV. — Mother, most admirable, pray for us 97 

XVI. — Holy Virgin of virgins, pray for us 108 

XVII. — Mother of the Saviour, pray for us 112 

XVIII.— Mother most powerful, pray for us 127 



CONTENTS. 

Meditation. Page. 

XIX. — Virgin most faithful, pray for us 129 

XX. — Virgin most merciful, pray for us 134 

XXI. — Mother of mercy, pray for us 140 

XXII. — Virgin most prudent, pray for us 147 

XXIII. — Gate of heaven, pray for us 153 

XXIV. — Mary our Mother, pray for us 159 

XXV. — Health of the weak, pray for us 165 

XXVI. — Seat of wisdom, pray for us 172 

XXVII. — Mother most amiable, and mother of pure love, 

pray for us 178 

XXVIII.— Mary, our abode, pray for us 194 

XXIX.— Mary, our hope, pray for us 189 

XXX. — Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the 

world, have mercy on us 197 

XXXI.— Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the 

world, grant us Thy peace 211 



INTRODUCTION. 



Every age of the Church is, in a certain sense, 
more glorious than any of the ages which have 
preceded it. It is true that there have been special 
ages in which God has magnified the Church more 
visibly than in others, and has been pleased to 
illustrate it with peculiar splendor : and these 
special ages have by no means followed each other 
in chronological succession . But on the whole , the 
glory of the Church increases with its age. It be- 
comes more famous by its very vicissitudes. Every 
trial through which it passes is a fresh illumination 
of its divine origin and its unearthly character. It 
grows more honorable by the mere force of time, 
because of the increased number of dangers which 
it has surmounted, of hostile predictions which it 
has belied, and of grand human institutions which 
it has outlived. Moreover the number of the 
saints in the Church triumphant multiplies yearly, 
and cannot be, according to St. Paul's law of sym- 
pathy, without influence on the Church militant. 
Thus the past, as it departs, is forever adorning the 
Church with beautiful monuments and interesting 
memorials, while the present, as it reinforces 
the multitudes of heaven, is forever infusing fresh 
vigor, joy and liberty into the body upon earth. 

But the additional splendor of the Church with 
which we are most concerned at present, is the 



vi 



INTRODUCTION. 



growth of its devotions. Although devotion comes 
out of doctrine, new devotions by no means imply 
new doctrines. Divine works are very vast and 
very fertile ; and, if the least mystery of the In- 
carnation is probably unfathomable, even by angelic 
intelligence, it cannot be a matter of surprise to 
us that the human mind, employed upon any of 
these mysteries in love and prayer, and often 
with infused wisdom from above, should be making 
continual discoveries of beauty, of pathos or of 
significance. The riches of Christ in the Incar- 
nation are simply unsearchable. They are thus 
able inexhaustibly to disclose themselves in new 
aspects and in new connections to the pure and 
sanctified mind. Furthermore, the characteristics 
of the mind of one century often differ materially 
from the genius of the mind of another century. 
The mind of any one age sees things from its own 
point of view, and reasons upon them in a way of 
its own ; and this of itself materially affects that 
body of devotional science which ages of medita- 
tion have brought together. Besides this, God is 
continually making private revelations to the 
saints and contemplatives ; and these, in different 
degrees, are received into the mind of the Church, 
and predominate in popular devotion. Each saint, 
as the Church tells us in the Divine Office, stands 
on an eminence of his own, which, though not 
necessarily higher than the eminences of other 
saints, is different from theirs, and is peculiarly 



INTRODUCTION. 



vii 



his own. Thus each saint for the most part leaves 
some impression of himself on the Church, and 
that impression is most likely to be traceable in 
popular devotion. Hence, while it is the property 
of beautiful things to expand and grow, it is the 
prerogative of the Church to be the place, the 
soil and the climate in which this expansion shall 
be the most luxuriant and graceful. 

There is something very astonishing, while it 
is also very grateful to the pious mind, in the 
growth of devotion to our Blessed Lady in the 
Church. It is wonderful to see practices of de- 
votion, which have now taken possession of the 
Catholic mind and become apparently inseparable 
from it ; and yet to be able to point to the indi- 
vidual saint, or to the particular religious order, 
out of whose character and sanctity the practice 
came, and to quote the date at which it first ap- 
peared in the Church. Of a truth the life of the 
Church is a very broadening thing, more so by 
far than the life of the world. But in nothing 
has this breadth been more palpable than in the 
matter of devotions, and in no devotion more 
signal than in that to our Blessed Lady. The 
faithful know more of our Lady than they did 
before. They know more of her, because they 
are continually receiving fresh kindnesses from 
her. The proofs of her power multiply. Her 
miracles, her interventions, her apparitions, her 
revelations, her pilgrimages — each century adds to 



viii 



INTRODUCTION. 



the amount of each one of these things, and so to 
the proof of all of them. Thus inevitable experience 
is always teaching the faithful more about Mary, 
while meditation is also adding to the bulk of our 
knowledge about her. Just as increase of de- 
votion to our Blessed Lady is in the individual 
soul the most unerring sign of growth in holiness, 
so is it in the Church an infallible sign of the 
broadening and deepening of its supernatural life. 
The immense increase of devotion to our Blessed 
Lady through the definition of the Immaculate 
Conception is the grandeur and the jubilee of the 
present age of the Church. 

It may also be remarked that times of unusual 
trouble for the Church have also been times of un- 
usual development of devotion to our Blessed 
Lady. This has partly arisen from the super- 
natural instinct which is always resident in the 
Church, and which is the law, sometimes con- 
sciously, sometimes unconsciously of its life. Partly 
also it has come from the quickening of our faith in 
our Lady's greatness and queenship, which is itself 
the effect and the reward of our mote vehement and 
urgent recourse to her protection. Besides this, the 
interests of the Church are in an especial manner 
her interests ; and, as queen of the apostles, she 
watches with a particular vigilance over the for- 
tunes of the Holy See. Hence, it is that in 
almost all the great sorrows of the Holy See she 
has come forth, and revealed herself, in some 



INTRODUCTION. 



striking manifestation. Nearly all the monu- 
ments of Church history are dedicated to Mary ; 
and they are dedicated to her, not so much by 
the intelligent gratitude of the faithful, as by the 
very force of the events themselves. When we are 
removed to a sufficient distance from events to see 
them in their true proportions, in the aspect in 
which all truthful history will henceforth see 
them, then there is no avoiding the conviction that 
Mary is the Star of the Bark of Peter, and a star 
whose rays shine through the thickest night, and 
the most terrific storms. 

To all the faithful, therefore, devotion to our 
Blessed Mother is of supreme importance. It is 
not a mere beauty of Catholic worship, a graceful 
accessory, an exquisite adornment, or a lawful 
consolation. It is an essential element in all 
Christian piety. Without it, holiness is simply 
impossible. But to us in an uncatholic country 
devotion to Mary assumes a very peculiar import- 
ance. We are surrounded on all sides by monu- 
ments of falsehood. The air is impregnated with 
its poison. The daily intercourse of life becomes 
almost a contagion of evil. Measures, weights, 
and standards, which are quite opposed to those 
of the sanctuary of God, are implied and acknow- 
ledged in the common language which we use, so 
that it is difficult to avoid making a material pro- 
fession of an unholy faith even when we have no 
such intention. The literature of our country is 



X 



IXTIIODUCTION. 



perpetually imbuing us with unchristian principles, 
the more insidiously the more the subject of it is 
apparently removed from religion altogether. The 
habitual perusal of the protestant newspapers is 
itself as nearly as possible incompatible with the 
existence of the spirit of prayer, or with the preser- 
vation of intelligent Catholic sympathies. The 
very sweetest and kindliest parts of our nature are 
perpetually alluring us to an easy and indulgent 
view of that deadliest of all sins, the sin of heresy, 
and thus to an acquiescence in that which ought, 
both morally and intellectually, to be the most 
repulsive of all things to us, falsehood about God. 

Now devotion to Mary has been in all ages, as 
an historical fact, the guardian of the doctrine 
about Jesus. There need be no surprise to us in 
this. Certainly a theologian would have expected 
it beforehand, even if he had no acquaintance 
whatever with the history of doctrine. But what 
we are concerned with now is the practical lesson 
which this fact reads to ourselves. Devotion to 
our Blessed Lady must be our refuge from the 
presence and the oppression of the triumphant 
heresy round about us. Of all our gifts, that of 
faith should be the dearest to us ; for it is the gift 
in which the secret of our strength consists, in 
which the sanctuary of our soul's life is placed. 
But growth in devotion to Mary is at the same 
time a growth in faith. By the pious observance 
of her feasts, by frequent meditation on her gran- 



INTRODUCTION. 



xi 



dears, by an intelligent study of the theology which 
concerns her, by enrolment in her Confraternities, 
by habitual telling of her beads, and by wearing 
her scapulars, we are perpetually fortifying our 
faith, augmenting its quantity, and quickening its 
intensity. The vigor of our faith enables us to 
resist the infection of heresy, and to pass unscathed 
by the poison of its touch. We shall do wisely, 
therefore, in the foul air of a protestant land, to 
regard it as one of our most urgent duties to increase 
in enthusiastic devotion to our Blessed Mother ; I 
say enthusiastic, because all devotion to her which 
is not enthusiastic is simply unintelligent. In this 
matter coldness is the result of ignorance. 

God has been unusually 1 ' rich in mercy" to the 
Catholics of this country during late years. We 
cannot but feel that He has some specially gracious 
designs upon us, if only we correspond with an 
ardent humility to the outpouring of His grace. 
Among His recent blessings none has been more 
signal or more significant than the increase of de- 
votion to our Blessed Lady amongst us. Her feasts 
are kept, not only with more ecclesiastical magnifi- 
cence, which is of great importance, but also with 
more frequentation of the sacraments, which is of 
greater importance. Her images are more frequent, 
and the kneelers around them more numerous and 
more fervent. The preaching of Mary is now one 
of the prominent duties of the clergy. The increase 
of popular devotion, and so the vigor of popular 



xii 



INTRODUCTION. 



faith, depends in no slight measure upon that 
preaching. According to the Litany, our Lady is 
the " Virgo praedicanda," "the Virgin to be 
preached," extolled, made much of, by the 
preachers of her Son. In a few more years the 
devotion to the grand Mother of God will have 
gone so far beyond what it is even now amongst 
us, that in the retrospect we shall hardly be able 
to understand how we could have been so back- 
ward so short a time ago. 

I have said that devotion to our Blessed Lady 
develops most rapidly when the Church is in more 
than common tribulation. But the venerable 
Grignon de Montfort tells us that its most remarka- 
ble development is reserved for the last age of 
the Church, when her sufferings will have reached 
their height, and the triumph of the world will 
seem to be most complete. He tells us, from St. 
Vincent Ferrer, that God has reserved for those 
days saints of almost unparalleled grandeur, whose 
distinguishing characteristic will be their devour- 
ing zeal for Mary's honor and who will enrich the 
persecuted Church with the new inventions of their 
fertile devotion. "We may hail, therefore, each new 
approved devotion to our Lady as an augury or a 
shadow of the coming of those latter times, and of 
the advent of those glorious saints. Is it lawful 
to conjecture that foremost among them may be 
Elias himself, who, in the extatic contemplations 
of his mysterious earthly hiding-place, is nourishing 



INTRODUCTION. 



xiii 



his supernatural life on the depths of the Incarna- 
tion? This has sometimes occurred to me when 
I have been pondering on St. Vincent's prediction. 
The prophet's vision from the top of Carmel may 
well suggest the thought. 

Among the Catholic devotions to our Blessed 
Lady, which have of late been taking deeper root 
in England, we may specify the Month of Mary. 
This devotion is itself a visible monument of that 
endless development of devotion to our Blessed 
Lady which characterizes the life of the Church. 
It belongs almost to our own times. St. Alphonso 
Liguori, whom we may call our latest saint, and 
who was himself one of the apostles of Mary, does 
not seem to have known it. It took its rise during 
the last century in the Boman College under the 
auspices of Father Muzzarelli, the Jesuit; but it 
does not appear to have received authoritative 
sanction until the present century. It has now 
become part of the popular calendar of the Church. 
Although it is not recognized either in the Breviary 
or in the Missal, it has become as acknowledged 
a season of the Christian year as Advent or Lent. 
The Church has enriched it with indulgences. 
Everywhere it is preached and celebrated as if it 
were a sort of annual mission to confirm, to per- 
petuate, to preserve, or to recover, the spiritual 
fruits of Lent. It comes in, like a privileged 
incursion, amongst the mysteries of Paschal-tide 
and Pentecost, taxing the skill of the pastor and 



xiv 



INTRODUCTION. 



the preacher to hinder its dislodging those mys- 
teries from the minds and hearts of the faithful. 
It has thus become an excellent test of our loyal 
sympathy with the living Church. There is 
scarcely a church or oratory in Christendom 
which does not bear marks of this devotion. A 
Roman devotion, it spread, as the Raccolta tells 
us, through the Holy City first of all rather as a 
family devotion; and now, like all Roman things, 
it has overrun the world we can hardly tell how. 
Mary herself has consecrated and propagated it by 
miracles and graces, until it has become in these 
days one of the most prominent devotions of her 
children. 

4 4 Months of Mary" have been composed in al- 
most all languages, and in endless varieties of 
form, matter and intention, suitable to the di- 
versity of tastes in devotion. Each one finds 
itself the favorite of some souls; and the same 
souls in different years recreate themselves with 
different observances of our Lady's month. The 
* ' Month of Mary " now introduced to the English 
reader has two peculiarities, upon which a few 
words should be said. 

There are some persons, who, in the practice 
of a devout life, and in the pursuit of perfection, 
are not in any way consciously affected by the 
spirit of modern times, or practically aware of 
any peculiar difficulties which it presents in the 
shape of temptations against the faith or want of 



INTRODUCTION. 



XV 



harmony with the old fashioned practices of the 
Church. If they are studious or thoughtful per- 
sons, they are quite alive, intellectually, to the look 
of incongruity with modern times, which there is 
about the almost unchanging Church, with its 
stern theories of exclusive salvation, and its hope- 
less attitude of resistance to the clamors of 
modern political philosophy and the genius of so- 
called progress. Intellectually, they appreciate 
thoroughly the difficulties arising out of this in- 
congruity, and the apparent position of disadvan- 
tage in which it places Catholics. But practically 
it concerns them very little or not at all. They 
take no interest in the matter, further than that it 
is one of the million ways in which the world 
kills souls. It does not trouble them in those in- 
ward lives of theirs which are ' ' hidden with Christ 
in God." It drops off from them in their ascetical 
life. It looks to them as an insignificant and 
external matter, part of the weary burden which 
Catholic journalists and controversialists must pro- 
fessionally bear, and a dispute in which the Church 
and the world can never understand each other, 
and to which, therefore, it is hopeless to expect any 
sort of conclusion whatever. Such men pray, 
and praise, and intercede, and mortify themselves, 
and occupy themselves with God, as if the nine- 
teenth century were the third or the thirteenth. 
They are at peace. In their estimation truth 
cannot change, because the world changes, nor 



xvi 



INTRODUCTION. 



do theories become false because sin makes the 
practice of them impossible. They know that 
the end of the world is to be an irreconcileable 
complication of the Church and the world ; and 
the gradual thickening and darkening of things 
towards this result, not being a matter of surprise 
to them, is also not a matter of disquietude. 

But there are less fortunate souls upon whose 
inward life these difficulties prey like vultures. 
Their gift of faith is not strong enough to defend 
the cloister of their piety. The world is a real 
difficulty to them. They cannot so abstract them- 
selves in the things of God as not to hear the 
clamors of science, politics, philosophy and 
literature, calling them every moment to account. 
To answer objections to themselves- must be part 
of their piety, just as to answer objections to others 
is part of their controversy. They cannot give 
themselves up exclusively and without further 
thought to the praise of God ! because they have 
not continually to prove to themselves His right 
to be praised. Hence their spiritual life is neither 
the peace nor the fruition which marks the spiri- 
tual life of the former class. Such persons arc 
to be pitied. Yet they have God's work to do, 
and they have their own way in which to serve 
Him. For them also books must be provided, 
which, even when they do not substantially an- 
swer objections, console the reader by keeping 
the objections in view, and speaking of them in 



INTRODUCTION. 



xvii 



modern language. They who rebuilt the walls 
of J erusalem with the sword in one hand and the 
trowel in the other, are the types of these holy 
and afflicted souls. It seems to be especially for 
them that this book was composed. It is re- 
dolent of a piety, which, while it has its eyes 
fixed on the quietudes of the eternal Throne, never 
omits to see also the disquietudes of unbelief. It 
implies perturbations by the very efforts which it 
makes to calm them. It is, therefore, very suita- 
ble for those who find that modern ways, and mod- 
ernt houghts, and modern things penetrate into 
their inward lives, and make a noise there. It is 
no fault of theirs. It is a sorrow, and for all 
sorrows there is a consolation. Moreover, it is a 
sorrow which may pass away ; and these souls 
may one day win an entrance into a quieter and 
happier sanctuary. 

The other characteristic of the book before us 
is the way in which it is all based upon the single 
dogma of the Immaculate Conception. At this 
time it is plain that all devotion to our Blessed 
Lady must be deeply tinctured with this doctrine. 
Its recent definition naturally becomes the very 
form of many devotions, and the presiding genius 
of all of them. But our author has done far 
more than this in his Month of Mary. He has 
shown that this beautiful dogma has an especial 
mission to our own days, and is meant to be the 
peculiar apostle of our peculiar difficulties. It 



Xviii IMTRODUCTION. 

floods with new light those very relations of the 
human soul to God, which are just now so fertile 
of temptations against the faith. It satisfies 
doubts which are characteristically modern. It 
is beforehand with some objections, and it im- 
poses silence upon others. It answers some diffi- 
culties by widening our field of vision, and so 
showing in harmony and unity what we only saw 
before fragmentarily and disjointedly. It answers 
others by making them proofs of divine truth in- 
stead of objections to it. It helps us to under- 
stand God, and it helps us to understand each 
other, and it helps us to understand ourselves. 
Almost all modern controversy can turn itself 
within the circle of this glorious dogma, and has 
room to fight there as well as to turn, and to reach 
its enemies without leaving its own defences. 
All this has been brought out by the author of 
this Month of Mary, with a readiness which is 
never unreal, and an ingenuity which is never 
unnatural. Both these characteristics, therefore, 
render his book eminently a modern book, and 
suitable for those upon whom the modern spirit 
imposes the painful trial of preserving the unc- 
tion of their hearts in the midst of the perplexity 
of their understandings. God has many good 
servants and many dear children amongst such 
persons : may He bless them with an increase of 
love to His Immaculate Mother ! 

F. W. Fabeb. 



THE MONTH OF MARY 
CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN. 

MEDITATION I. 

Lord, have mercy upon us j Christ have mercy upon us \ 
Lord, have mercy upon us. 

Lord, have mercy upon all men! Lord Jesus, 
when Thou wert here, Thou hadst pity on the 
world, and Thou didst shed tears when Thou didst 
behold mankind all sitting in darkness and in 
death, all crushed under the weight of evil, of 
suffering, and of sin. 

Lord, let Thine eyes be ever upon us ; let Thy 
compassion never fail us. Look through the 
world and see how many souls are dead ! Behold, 
how void of love men are, how void of hope, and 
void of faith, and how, in the hopelessness of their 
hearts, they make no struggle, pour forth no 
prayer to Thee, but bury themselves deeper and 
deeper in flesh and blood. Behold, Lord, how 
these groveling souls unman themselves, and 
become like to beasts, how they spurn not Thy 
grace only, but the natural use of their reason 
and their freedom. Behold how men, in the 
mists of sensuality and the madness of self-love, 
hate each other, fear, betray, deceive and murder 
one another, and, as the Prophet says, fill the 
earth with adultery and with blood. (Osee iv 



MEDITATION I. 



2.) Behold, Lord, how the venom of sin ever 
spreads ruin among the nations, poisoning men's 
bodies and souls, their hearts and their minds. 

Have mercy, Lord, on the multitudes of men 
who make no progress, upon whom no light has 
yet shone, whose darkness grows thicker day by 
day, the more they resist the influence of the true 
Sun that would fain enlighten their drowsy souls. 

Have mercy on all Christian people ! Have 
mercy on those who waver in their faith ; who 
understand not the dignity of their calling, who 
know not the divine power that dwells within 
them, nor the virtues that cleanse and the doc- 
trines that heal us, which Thou bestowest on all 
men through Thy Church ! Have pity on those 
who, through trepidity, hesitate and stop short, 
for whom that dreadful hour of the Apocalypse 
seems to have struck, when the King of men, dis- 
gusted as it were, and wearied out with waiting, 
casts them off, and vomits them out of his heart. 
(Apoc. iii. 16.) 

Have mercy, Lord, on all who truly seek to 
find Thee, and who endeavor more and more to 
conform their thoughts, their conduct, and their 
laws, to Thy divine Word. Have mercy on the 
hard struggles they have to make against hypo- 
crisy and ignorance, against the spirit of evil, 
against those who would corrupt the world ! 

Have mercy on those separated Christians who 
are beginning to have a glimpse of the pure light 
of Catholicity, but who, without Thine aid, will 
long remain under the yoke of established false- 
hood, of ignorance well nigh invincible, of the 
love of their rich endowments, and of inveterate 



MEDITATION I. 



3 



hatred against the central authority of Thy 
Church ! Above all, Lord, have mercy on all 
faithful souls who are striving against sin ! Have 
mercy on those souls who, with Saint Paul, con- 
stantly pray to be delivered ! and to whom Thou 
dost answer: " Fight on, my grace is sufficient 
for you." (2 Cor. xii. 9.) Ah ! Lord, how long 
shall we be always falling into sin, after a few 
short struggles, after some slight victories ? How 
long shall we be forced to say : 6 ' My sin is ever 
before me?" (Ps. 1. 5.) How long shall our 
faces be covered with confusion? How long shall 
the sight of the light, and the love of life only 
lead to more cruel struggles with darkness and 
death? How long shall we lack that progress 
which makes the grain of mustard seed grow into 
the great tree to which all the heavenly virtues 
are gathered together? How long shall we lack 
that divine growth, without which no one can 
either serve Thee, or fight under Thy banner for 
the good of men? How long, my God, shall 
all those souls whom Thou dost call to sanctity, 
waste their strength in this dark conflict with 
evil? Lord, have mercy on us ! 

Lord, have mercy on all men in every necessity 
of mind or body. Have mercy on all new-born 
babes who are in danger of dying unbaptized. 
Have mercy on the babes destined to be thrown 
into the rivers, or into the streets for the dogs to eat. 

Have mercy on those, the very gates of whose 
life are hemmed in and surrounded with vice ! 
Have mercy on the child who is falling upon its 
first scandal ! Have mercy on youth in the age of 
passion, when the first excitement of the senses 



4 



MEDITATION I. 



slays the souls of half their number, even as in 
the natural order, half the infants that are born 
die within a year of their birth ! 

Have mercy on those whose minds are so open 
to scandal, at the age when the sophisms of 
ignorance so easily warp us from the truth ! 

Have mercy on the young girls, whom poverty 
has brought to despair, and on those who are in- 
toxicated with pleasure. 

Have mercy on those who, when they come to 
the full use of reason and of liberty, hesitate be- 
tween the path of pleasure and that of justice 
and truth ! Have mercy on those who begin, and 
then turn back. Have mercy too on those who 
begin and go on valiantly for half a life, and in 
middle age get weary, look behind them, and ask 
back from the earth the tinsel prizes which, in the 
purity of their youth they had been wise enough 
to despise. 

Have mercy on the infirm and aged, whose 
weakness casts a sickly hue on all things, to whom 
blindness and palsy leave no other thought than 
the barren and monotonous care of their poor re- 
mains of life. 

Have mercy on the dying, who have come to 
their last hour, and yet have not begun the labor 
of their life nor planted in their heart the seed of 
eternal life ! 



5 



MEDITATION II. 

Christ, hear us I Christ, graciously hear us. God, the 
Father of heaven, have mercy on us ! God the Son, Redeemer 
of the world, have mercy on usl God the Holy Ghost, have 
mercy on us ! Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us. 

Lord, our evils are great ; sin is the only real 
evil, and the spring of its bitter waters is never 
dry. In the individual soul it seems to multiply 
with its years, and in each nation with its progress. 
Nevertheless the Holy Church ceases not to pray : 
Hear us, graciously hear us, deliver us from evil ! 

Will evil never be lessened among us ? Will 
Thy kingdom never come upon earth, as it is in 
heaven? Shall God and His Christ never be 
better known? Shall Thy Gospel never bring 
nations and hearts under its sway more than now ? 
Shall the nations of the world never be healed, 
or shall they never become less blind to Thy 
truth? Shall not the number of Thy servants 
and friends, Thy worshipers in spirit and truth, 
be multiplied among men ? Shall every one that 
cometh into the world find himself surrounded by 
the same darkness, the same stumbling-blocks? 
Let it not be, we beseech Thee ; Lord, hear our 
prpycr. 

Lord, hear the prayers which Thy Holy Spirit 
inspires, and which we offer to Thee on behalf of 
all mankind: " God of my fathers, and Lord of 
mercy, who hast made all things with Thy word, 
and by Thy wisdom hast appointed man that he 
should have dominion over the creature that was 
made by Thee, that he should order the world 



6 



MEDITATION II. 



according to equity and justice, and execute jus- 
tice with an upright heart; give us wisdom, that 
sitteth by Thy throne, and cast us not off." (Wis- 
dom ix. 1.) 

Can this prayer be made in vain? Shall not 
wisdom be given to us? Shall man, who was 
born to have dominion over all created things, 
remain for ever slavishly bound to them by his 
senses? Shall man, who was born to order and 
dispose the world in justice and equity, shall he 
never cease polluting it with adultery and blood, 
with rapine and iniquity ? Is there no remedy for 
all this evil? 

Lord, when Thy children are encouraged to 
believe that the time is drawing near when Thou 
shalt eome again to reign on the earth, shall they 
be deceived in their hope ?* Shall we say that 
the pious belief now so general throughout the 
Church, that Thou wilt renew the earth in the 
knowledge and love of Jesus, by the union of 
hearts with the heart of Mary Immaculate, f is 
false ? Didst not Thou Thyself, Lord, inspire 
the hearts of Thy faithful and of their pastors 
with this same hope, by that mysterious operation 
of the Holy Spirit, which the holy Fathers speak of? 

Let us persevere in our prayer, let us ask God 
to give us the knowledge and the practice of those 
remedies which He has prepared for us. In the 
spirit of faith let us invoke the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost. 

* Cat. Con. Trid. on the words, " Thy kingdom come." 

fSee Petavins, de Incar. lib. 14, c. 3, No. 10, &c; and Pas- 

eagia de Immac. p. 10. 



MEDITATION II. 



7 



Father, Creator of the world, have mercy on 
the work of Thy hands. Thou didst foresee all 
the consequences of the abuse of free will ; sin, 
disobedience, pride, self-love and all evil desires ; 
Thou didst foresee all our sufferings and death ; 
but Thou didst also foresee, and didst prepare a 
remedy, and man himself was its treasure-house. 
Thou didst give him treasures of hidden strength 
for his life-long strife with Satan. Father of 
heaven, display all these treasures, and employ 
all this force. 

Son, Redeemer of the world, who by Thine own 
infinite power hast restored that which no created 
power could have raised up, who by Thy boundless 
love hast been pleased to make Thyself one with 
the work of Thine hands, to save him, to deliver 
him from evil, and to bring him one day to the 
enjoyment of eternal perfection ; Thou who didst 
so love purity that none but a virgin could give 
Thee birth, and who didst so love sanctity that 
Thou didst preserve Thy Virgin Mother from all 
stain of original sin ; who didst thus reserve for 
Thyself in the midst of a fallen world one spot 
of immaculate purity, there to unite Thyself with 
human nature; Thou who by Thy labors, Thy 
virtues, Thy sufferings, agony, and infinite merits, 
hast remedied the irreparable wrongs of sin ; who, 
finally, by Thy death and sacrifice hast opened to 
men the living source of life eternal — God the 
Son, Redeemer of the world, continue the work 
of our redemption, pour forth Thy merits, sanctify 
Thy Church, increase the number of laborers, 
and of those who follow Thee ; give zeal to those 
who are to fight Thy battles, who suffer and con- 



8 



MEDITATION II. 



quer with Thee, to whom Thou hast promised that 
they shall do greater works even than Thine ! 

Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the world, Love 
eternal and infinite ; Love who art in God and 
who art God ; Love whose fire sanctifies ; Thou 
who didst impart to Mary ever Virgin, her divine 
and supernatural maternity ; and by whose opera- 
tion that crowning fruit which God, from all 
eternity, designed His works to produce, was 
born ; Thou who wouldst begin Thy new creation 
by making an immaculate heart, to be the one 
refuge for God in the midst of universal wicked- 
ness, — Holy Spirit, have mercy on us ! Console 
us in this valley of tears ! Dissipate our darkness, 
drive away our enemies, shed forth Thy light, 
inflame our hearts, "create"* Thine elect, "re- 
new the face of the earth," keep up the succession 
of doctors and saints ; increase in us the gifts of 
knowledge and of piety ; so may we hope for th*» 
coming of > the kingdom of God on earth. Thou 
didst reveal truths to the Apostles, such as they 
could not bear while Jesus was yet on the earth ; 
they are in the keeping of thy Church ; but how 
little do the Church's children know of the trea- 
sures of science contained in divine truth ! Often 
have the Fathers of the Church grieved, with St. 
Paul, that they could not impart to the feeble the 
* ■ bread of the strong !" A servant of God wrote 
more than a century ago: "Till now Mary has 
been unknown, and this is one reason why Jesus 
Christ is not known as He should be. If then, 
as no one can doubt, the reign of Jesus Christ is 



* Ps. ciii. 30. 



MEDITATION IT. 



9 



coming upon the earth, it will be but a necessary 
consequence of the knowledge of the most Holy 
Virgin and of her reign in men's hearts."* Oh 
my God, how these words of Thy servant trans- 
port me with joy! It may be that the definition 
of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, with all 
the consequences which it involves, will smsd a 
new lustre on the most fundamental truths of faith. 
Spirit of light, shorten the days of our spiritual 
infancy, and by Thy holy inspirations, show forth 
in the church, and in our souls, the full light of 
Thy divine word.f 

Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us! 
Grant that in us may be accomplished ever more 
and more, that last prayer of J esus Christ, * * That 
they may be one, as we are one." (John xvii. 
2.) All the innumerable multitudes of men now 
dwelling on the earth, all who have lived and all 
who are yet to live, — Thou didst create them to 
have but one heart and one soul, to be one as 
Thou art, to be one amongst themselves and with 
Thee. But all have forsaken Thee; they have 
fallen from Thee, who art their true centre, and 
are scattered till no two remain together. Two 
or three gathered together in Thy name, God, 
are such a wonder, that Thou dost promise them, 
whenever they can be found, to dwell in the midst 
of them, and to grant them whatsoever they ask 
Thee. (Matt, xviii. 19.) Holy Trinity, 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, One God, and 

* Treatise on true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, by F. de 
Montfort, p. 7. 

t Spiritus tuus inducat nos in omnen, sicut tuus promisit 
Filius, veritatem. — Miss. Rom. in prsepar. ad Missam. 



10 



MEDITATION III. 



pattern of our unity, have mercy upon us! Take 
away all hindrances to our unity! Bring to pass 
the triumph of that kingdom, that city whose 
members are at unity among themselves. (Ps. 
cxxi. 3.) Gather up according to the prayer of 
one of Thy servants each soul into unity with 
itself, and all souls into the catholic unity of our 
mother the heavenly Jerusalem. She is the 
mother of all men that are collected into the one 
Church, the queen of unity, the ark of the cove- 
nant, outside which no man can be in Thee, 
God, Thou uncreated Centre of all spirits, and of 
all flesh. May this gate of heaven be opened 
wider and wider for mankind to pass in, and to be 
united to Thee ! 



MEDITATION III. 



Hoi j Mary, pray for us! Holj Mother of God, pray for us! 

And where shall we find this refuge of man- 
kind ? Where is this wisdom who is the treasure- 
house of Thy strength, my God, through whom 
evil may be overcome and destroyed, and whose 
power can draw Thee down into the hearts of all 
mankind? Where is this one undefined spot of 
Thy creation through which Thou couldst come 
back into the world? Where is this heart of 
mankind into which the Word came down to take 
flesh amongst us, on which the Holy Spirit was 
shed for the work of our new creation ? Who is 
this Mother of regenerate man, this Queen of 



MEDITATION III. 



11 



unity, this Gate of heaven, by whom mankind is 
at unity with itself and with God ? Who is she 
but that Queen of heaven whom the Church has 
named Mother of God ? In the midst of the holy 
city of Jerusalem, which is the Church of God, 
and the house of unity, is the Ark of the Cove- 
nant, the Queen of Unity, the Mother of divine 
Love, the Mother of Mankind, and of the Church 
herself ; who is, with and after Jesus Christ, the 
centre of the world of spirits ; who is, with and 
after the Holy Ghost, the heart of the city of 
God ; this centre, this heart, is the Holy Mother 
of God. 

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us ! Obtain 
for us now the grace to meditate with understand- 
ing and with love, upon the mystery of Thine 
office, a mystery, the daily increasing manifesta- 
tion of whose reality, splendor and power, is 
perhaps the refuge which God has reserved for 
these latter days. 

Truly Thou, God, art the refuge of the 
world; Thou only, Jesus, our Redeemer, art 
the world's Salvation. But the world will not be 
saved if it rejects God and His Christ, if man- 
kind refuses to co-operate in the work of its sal- 
vation. The grace of God ever knocks at our 
door, but we are ever free to reject it ; we must 
say with St. Augustine, "0 my God, Thou hast 
created us by Thyself, without our aid, but Thou 
savest us not without our consent." There is 
then, as it were, a human side to redemption, and 
man must co-operate with God. ' ' We are,'' 
says St. Paul, "fellow-workers with God." (1 
Cor. iii. 9.) 



12 



MEDITATION III. 



God begins, man must continue; God gives, 
and man must take ; God speaks, and man must 
listen ; God enlightens and inspires, man must 
understand and obey. 

And of these two forces, God's which works 
our redemption, and man's which co-operates for 
our redemption, which is the defaulter? Does 
God fail us, or do we fail God ? 

From the beginning to the end of history, man 
has ever been wanting to God — God has never 
been wanting to man. " God," says St. Thomas, 
(2da. 2dae. q. iv. art. 4. ad 3.) "is ever work- 
ing man's justification, as the sun ever operating 
the illumination of the air." The backwardness 
of the world, the wounds of our nature, the fall- 
ing away of nations, the apostasies of men, are 
due only to us; and since Christ died to save us, 
since He left us His Sacraments to renew us, 
since He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in His 
Church, our victory, our progress, our eternal sal- 
vation, depend in some sort upon ourselves, and 
are in our own hands. 

In one essential point, redemption has always 
depended upon man. In the eternal counsels it 
was decreed that our nature should be associated 
with God in the work of redemption, and if God 
willed to become Son of Man, He willed also- 
that one human person, in the name of all man- 
kind should consent to become Mother of God.* 

* St. Thomas says " It was fitting that it should be an- 
nounced to the Blessed Virgin that she was to conceive Christ 
.... .in order to show that there was a kind of spiritual mar- 
riage between the Son of God and human nature. And there- 
fore, through the annunciation, the consent of the Blessed 
Virgin, in lieu of that of all human nature, was asked for." 
Sum. 3. b. 30. art. I. 



MEDITATION III. 



13 



Thou then, Holy Mother of God, art the 
refuge of us men, for by thee God entered into 
the world, and will enter more and more into 
each soul, and into all mankind. Through thee 
every soul may always hope to be a saint; through 
thee, the nations that God made for health, may, 
if they will, be healed; by thee, the world, still 
so full of lawlessness and darkness, may advance 
in the road of light and equity. 

Holy Mother of God, from all eternity God 
willed to unite Himself with his creature, that 
He might draw it towards Himself. But He 
needed thy birth, thy worth, thy merits, and thy 
consent, before He could accomplish His eternal 
purpose. Well, then, mayest thou be called the 
Mother of the new creation and of the world to 
come. 

God is always full of love, and all that He 
desires is to enter the soul of every man; He 
knocks at the door of the heart, and waits for it 
to be opened to Him; He is always there, but we 
are almost always away. He will not enter be- 
fore we return, before we enter into our heart, 
where He wishes to dwell. He will not be born 
within us until thou art with us, Mary, until 
thou hast communicated to us in some sort the 
virtue of thy divine maternity, the blessed state 
of those of whom J esus said, ' ' Whosoever doeth 
the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my 
mother.'' (Matt. xii. 50.) It is, then, through 
thy intercession, and through imitation of thee, 
that each soul arrives at its everlasting end. 

So also, Mother of God, though God is al- 
ways present with His Church, to inspire her and 



14 



MEDITATION III. 



to rule her, nevertheless there are periods when 
the triumphs of the Church are few, and there 
are others when they abound. Sometimes schisms 
divide her, and heresies weaken her ; sometimes 
brilliant victories strengthen her ; schisms come 
to an end, and whole nations are restored to her 
fold. Has man no share in all these changes ? 
His prayer which draws down God, his meritorious 
actions which make God take up His abode on 
earth, the good use of his free-will, thy inter- 
cession, which he invokes more or less ardently, 
thy example, more or less closely followed, these 
are the means of enlarging the kingdom of God, 
and of multiplying the triumphs of the Church. 

God is willing to give us all ; all now depends 
on us, and on thee, by whom all is received and 
treasured up, by whom all is transmitted, 
Mother of God! All depends on the union of 
men with her who receives all from God. 

Mary, holy Mother of God, obtain for me 
that I may know and meditate upon these truths, 
for the sole purpose of applying them to my soul, 
and framing my life by them. Let me not be 
contented with a speculative knowledge which 
leads not to love, and is not true to itself. 

my God ! at least once in my life may I say 
with Thy prophet, "Now have I begun; this is 
the change of the right hand of the Most High." 
(Ps. lxxvi. 11.) How often have I begun and 
not gone on! When shall I begin in earnest? 
When shall I experience that new life and that 
lasting change which God alone can work ! 

Oh Virgin, Mother of God, there never was 
any true change, any true renewal of the world, 



MEDITATION III. 



15 



but through thee! "God has created a new 
thing upon the earth," (Jerm.xxx. 22.) says the 
prophet, in proclaiming thy divine maternity. 
Yes, I see, there never was a new thing in the 
world, till He whose name is God-with-us came 
into it. There never will be new life in me, 
until the Eternal Word is born in my soul. Hath 
He not said, My Mother is he who doeth the will 
of God? My soul, therefore, must in a sense 
become mother of God, because she must do the 
will of God. God wills to exalt my soul to this 
heavenly state, but I, like thee, Mother of God, 
must merit it by His grace. Help me, then, while 
I strive to merit the increase of the new life and 
the birth of the new man, which the Holy Ghost 
seeks to create in me, and whose germ the Holy 
Communion plants in my soul. Under thy fos- 
tering hand may this germ grow into a tree of 
life. Let not the floods of vulgar cares too soon 
wash away the body, the blood, and the soul of 
Jesus thy Son, when He has come to me ; may 
mortal sin never again crucify the new man in me, 
may the blight of perpetual venial sins no longer 
stint His growth and hold him captive ; may the 
time come quickly for grace to triumph in my 
soul, and for the Truth to declare that Jesus 
grows therein in grace and wisdom before God 
and man, 



16 



MEDITATION IV. 

Mother of divine grace, pray for us. 

Mother of divine grace, pray for us! Thou 
who hast received all grace, thou who hast con- 
ceived in thy womb the fountain-head of grace, who 
art tilled with grace that thou mayest impart it to 
us,* Mother of Grace, pray that we may know the 
merit of thy maternity ; pray that we may share it, 
that the grace of God may no more fall fruitlessly 
on us or on the world, that we may no longer 
choke its growth, or refuse it, as the glaciers or the 
sands of the desert which feel not the fertilizing 
influences of the sun. 

He who doth the will of my Father, says our 
Saviour, is my brother, my sister, and my mother. 
Doing God's will is the condition of the soul's 
becoming a mother of grace; and the peerless 
Virgin, who ever perfectly accomplished the will 
of God, thereby merited to conceive grace in Its 
fullness, and in Its fountain-head. From the first 
moment of her life she was obedient to all the 
most secret and the most imperceptible inspira- 
tions of grace. She was obedient all through her 
life, and never ceased to watch, like the best of 
mothers, over the infant Saviour. She was obe- 
dient, we may be sure, to death, even to the death 
of the cross ; for she suffered in the sight of her 
Son on the cross all that He suffered, and her will 
was united to God's in willing all the sufferings 
that He felt, and that she felt with Him. 

* Omnium divinarum gratiarum sedem. — Bull of Pius IX 



MEDITATION IV. 



17 



God's grace is like the sun, it shines on the 
good and on the evil; but the good obey, and 
answer to the inspirations of grace, and their 



ternity that conceives and develops the seeds of / 
grace; the bad remain barren. . 

This is the whole secret of Christian life, and 
of the progress of each soul, and of the world* 
God begins, but man must follow and obey, mus$ 
act and must suffer that he may in some sort de->* 
serve to partake of the holy maternity of grace. 

In the history of the spiritual life, the first period 
is the day of miracles and of great consolations ; 
the latter days should be the seasons of great and 
austere virtues. The first period is that of our 1 
mercenary life, when God gives all and man 
returns little ; the latter times are those of sacri- 
fice, when man, more advanced, seeks to make 
greater returns to God. The soul that would ex- 
perience nothing but miracles and consolations, is 
one that does not persevere, and that never pro- 
gresses. 

It seems that when a soul is newly born to 
grace, God at first undertakes to bear it as a 
mother carries her child; He Himself moves its 
limbs for it, and fills its youth with a holy joy, 
arid with abundance of strength. But man, like 
the prodigal son, soon exhausts the store, which 
ever grows less till the fatal moment when all his 
warmth, all his energy is spent; and at the very 
time when he should be beginning to make some 
returns, to go alone, and to support himself, like 
a child who has learned to walk, to go freely to 
God by the way of sacrifice, then he first begins 



souls acquire some of the marks 




2 



IS 



MEDITATION IV. 



to feel his weakness, his poverty, his powerless- 
ness in the struggle against sin. Then it is that 
souls, which seemed given up to God, but which 
in the midst of His unceasing graces, still lived 
immersed in flesh and blood, and only sought God 
with reservations and with conditions, then it is 
that such souls have a sudden fall, and, after 
seeming to have their conversation in heaven, by 
a shocking catastrophe are found wallowing in the 
mud like Solomon, and finish with the flesh, after 
they had begun with the spirit. (Galat. iii. 3.) 
This is what Scripture means when it says, " The 
bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half 
their days." (Ps. liv. 24.) For after a promis- 
ing spring, which gives blossoms in abundance, 
many a soul never reaches the season of matu- 
rity, when she should bear fruit and yield her 
harvest to God. In spite of the fair promise, the 
canker-worm was gnawing at the root of these 
blooming trees ; legions of invisible insects were 
poisoning the flowers and the seed; the storms 
of earth had destroyed the hopes of the year, and 
the springtide promise of the richest gifts of 
heaven ended in abortion and barrenness. 

Thus the fount of concupiscence, of pride, and 
sensuality, which we bear within us at our birth, 
often continues its work in souls which have re- 
ceived the most sublime inspirations and the 
greatest gifts of grace; and if man, by the strict- 
est watchfulness, the most exact and humble obe- 
dience, the most determined conflict, and by a 
sacrifice of self to God, as complete as that of 
God for us — if man, in proportion to the great- 
ness of the gifts he has received, will not in his 



MEDITATION IV. 



19 



turn give himself, humble himself, and sacrifice 
himself, the soul also will have her overwhelming 
storms and her consuming fires, will have her 
hidden leprosy, and her legions of invisible ene- 
mies, who will surely compass her fall on her way 
through this life, and will bring her empty and 
barren before the tribunal of God. 

thou, Mother of Grace, and Mother of Souls, 
in whom no concupiscence could ever grow, for it 
had no root in thee, pray for us, and preserve our 
souls from the awful curse of barrenness. Thou 
didst co-operate with every grace; obtain, then 
for us, that according to our poor measure we may 
correspond with God's endeavors to save us; that 
the human side in the work of our salvation may 
not be false to the divine side, and that when the 
time comes for the soul to act with God and to 
follow Him, to answer His calls, to pay back what 
He has lent, to ripen the fruits which He has 
sown and quickened, the soul may be found 
fruitful, and may not be cursed like the barren fig 
tree, on which Jesus sought fruit and found none. 

Mother of Grace, I would now begin to act 
and to suffer that I may escape the curse of final 
barrenness. I now see that at all times God stirs 
me up with His grace, and tries to rouse me from 
my sleep and my sloth. Has He not often said 
to me, as He did to the paralytic of the Gospel, 
ic Rise up, and walk/' and I have not walked? 
Every day He tries to wake me out of my slum- 
bers, but I only sleep on. As every morning 
the Father of the world awakens men, arouses 
them from their bodily sleep, and commands them 



20 



MEDITATION V. 



to rise and go to their daily toil, so it is in the life 
of my soul. " Watch and pray; rise up and 
walk ; take the cross and follow me these are 
the words which I hear. It is the voice of Him 
whom St. Augustine calls the | ' Father of the 
morning watch." 

But who awakes to the true life, who wakes to 
work with God ? Who learns to walk with perse- 
verance ? Who will bear His cross ? I will, 
Mother of Grace. I have delayed too long, I 
have slept overmuch. Time flies. The time 
which God has allotted to my earthly sojourn will 
all be spent jf I do not now awake. " 



MEDITATION V. 

"Help of Christians, pray for us ! 

Help of Christians, pray for us ! Pray that Chris- 
tian nations may fulfil their destiny on the earth I 

Neither mankind nor men are forced into good 
or evil. Mankind is free, it can make a choice. 
Its end will be good or bad * as it pleases. 

It is the same with the world at large as with 
each man. One man passes from the grace and 
purity of childhood, to the consuming fire of youth, 
" and rooteth up all things that spring." . (Job, 
xxxi. 12.) Then, as years go on, ambition and 
avarice harden his heart, till the moral blindness 
of self love comes upon him and he sinks into a 
vicious and unhappy old age. Another passes. 



MEDITATION V. 



21 



from his tender age to the bright ardor of gener- 
ous youth; and after worthily spending the 
strength of his manhood, enjoys the calm autum- 
nal days of a good old age, and awaits the time of 
his departure like a wise man full of goodness, 
love and piety. 

Mankind, here on earth, can choose between 
these two paths. Any one may become wise or a 
fool, a saint or a sinner, as he wills. 

There is in the mind of God an ideal plan of 
history which would be the best to follow, but 
which man by his disobedience, may change ; and 
in His mind there is also a plan for the life of each 
man. But few men follow out the plan of their 
heavenly vocation. In this divine plan there is 
an order of days, of periods of progress, such as 
God would have it ; but the Holy Scripture tells 
us : " Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out 
half their days." So it is with all mankind. 
They may live on in the perversity of their flesh 
and blood, but their end will be evil, they will 
not fulfil the second part of their history according 
to the plan which God prefers. 

As there is a crisis in each man's life, so there 
is a crisis in the world's history. 14 In the midst 
of my days I shall go to the gates of hell," says 
the prophet, (Is. xxxviii. 10.) 44 Lord, Thy 
work, in the midst of the years bring it to life." 
(Habac. iii. 1.) This is the prayer which all 
mankind and each man should address to God 
through her who is the help of Christians if we 
ivould in the end escape the curse of sterility and 
reap the harvest of our labors. 

And what is the great crisis now going on in 



22 



MEDITATION V. 



the world? May not the seed which well-nigh 
sixty centuries have sown, have come to maturity? 
May not this be the time for the harvest of men 
which we are to witness? Such may be, perhaps, 
the question proposed to the human race in these 
our days. 

Listen to the divine words which the Saviour 
taught us, which are and ought to be the constant 
prayer of every wise man : ' * Our Father, who art 
in heaven, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done 
on earth as it is in heaven." What do they mean ? 
They mean that there is a kingdom of God on 
earth, for the coming of which we ought to pray ; 
which man's perversity may retard or put an end 
to, in each soul and throughout the world, and 
whose coming is the fulfillment of the Will of God 
on earth as it is in lieaven. 

It may be that all depends on the free choice of 
the age in which we live. If the men of this age 
declare themselves more decidedly for and against 
God ; if too many minds remain rooted in hatred 
and in credulity; if Christians are tepid and weak, 
and too often fall into sin; if they rouse them- 
selves not by some great act of faith, by some 
generous impulse towards truth, by stronger 
habits of hope and charity, then may these years 
of grace and trial prove our last, the world end ill, 
and die in a rapid decay, before the kingdom of 
God can be increased and before its fruits can 
come to maturity. 

Who but man then would be the cause of this 
premature death? And who but man can avert 
it, by corresponding to the grace of God ? For 
the grace of God abounds, but our co-operation 



MEDITATION V. 



23 



fails. Life is in our own hands : do we desire it ? 
God has given Himself : shall we receive Him ? 
If there is one thing after which all men should 
strive, it is this : to know God, to receive the Sa- 
viour, and to accept the grace which is offered or 
given to us. But this has been already done by 
one among the children of men, by the Virgin 
Mary, Mother of God, Mother of Grace, Mother of 
the Saviour. By her free consent, God was born 
into the world and made one of us ; by her free 
consent, J esus was offered for the salvation of the 
world. What then remains to be done? That 
all the world, and each soul in the world, should 
be united with her who co-operated in the redemp- 
tion, and is the help of Christians, that they should 
take her for their model, for their guide, their 
queen, and their Mother, in order that with her 
and like her, they may receive the Kedeemer and 
establish His reign on earth as it is in heaven. 

Would that those of our separated brethren who 
do not know the Blessed Virgin, nor what is signi- 
fied by her, nor why the Catholic Church is al- 
ways adding to the homage of love which she pays 
her, might comprehend that she co-operated of 
her own free will in the work of salvation, and 
that she represents, with and after Jesus Christ, 
the free co-operation of man with God. She re- 
ceived God in all His fullness, she obeyed, she 
acted and suffered freely, knowingly and perfectly, 
for the salvation of the world, and in so doing she 
represents the human element in the work of the 
salvation of man. She is the representative of 
that reason and liberty in the presence of God, 
which He inspires and aids; she says to God, 



24 



MEDITATlUa f . 



"Behold the handmaid of the Lord." Jesus 
Christ is the God-Man ; but Mary is human na- 
ture pure and simple in the presence of God and 
of His Christ, seeking after God with all its 
strength, with all its mind, and all its heart. 

If then there is any one point in religion on 
which, after the Man-God, all depends, it is the 
Blessed Virgin and true devotion to her. It was 
God's will to give Himself to man ; ifc was her will 
that received Him; and now that Jesus Christ 
continues to bestow Himself upon us, it is by the 
Blessed Virgin, by her worship, by the thought 
of her, by imitating her, by her intercession, that 
we shall likewise receive Him and accept His 
kingdom. The redemption has been accomplished ; 
it has only to be applied. If then there is any 
question of the progress of the kingdom of God 
upon earth, it is surely chiefly on our side. The 
question is, what will be our courage, our ardor, 
our fidelity in walking in the footsteps of the 
♦Queen of men, the Mother of grace, the co-opera- 
tor in our salvation, and the help of Christians? 
If then among the manifold characteristics of 
Christian piety, there is one of greater eflicacy, 
one which is stronger, more glorious, more noble, 
more manly than any other, more worthy of man 
in the fullness of his strength, his reason, and his 
liberty, it is that which adheres most closely to 
the spirit of the Blessed Virgin, to the imitation 
of her spirit, which consists in desiring to work 
with God, by means of obedience, labor, courage, 
and sacrifices, that we may merit an increase of 
His kingdom both in ourselves and in all men. 



MEDITATION Y. 



25 



I resolve then, my God, to cultivate this 
pure and virginal spirit, which alone is worthy to 
receive Thee, and alone can give fruitfulness to 
the soul. I desire, like the Mother of Grace, to 
work for God. And in order to imitate Jesus 
Christ, and to become also His Mother,* I desire 
to co-operate by my labors and sacrifices towards 
my own salvation and that of the whole world, as 
the Holy Scripture says of the Machabees, who in 
the holy enthusiasm of their courage, 4 'did not 
care to save themselves alone, but undertook to 
save the greatest possible number of their breth- 
ren." I will not forget that mankind needs the 
efforts of all its children, that the extension of 
God's kingdom on earth may be arrested by my 
crimes, and that if the issue of the struggle, in 
this critical epoch of the world, is uncertain, each 
one may do something towards defeat or victory. 

Mary, Queen of men, through whom God 
came upon earth, and there took flesh ; whom God 
created without spot, that through thee eternal 
light f might shine over the world; whom God 
made fruitful through thine immaculate purity; 
who didst undertake the human side of salvation 
:n union with the humanity of Jesus Christ, when 
thou didst speak the words : ' 1 Behold the hand- 
maid of the Lord, be it done unto me according 
to Thy word" — Queen of mankind, Mother of 

* "For whosoever shall do the will of My Father that is in ■ 
heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Matt, 
xii. 50.) See also the IXth lesson in the Office of the Blessed 
Virgin in the Roman Breviary. 

f Quse lumen aeternum mundo efiudit J. CD. N. (Pre- 
face of the Mass of the B. Yira ) 



26 



MEDITATION VI. 



divine grace, and help of Christians, if we are 
now in the midst of that crisis which is to deter- 
mine and decide the destiny of mankind upon 
earth, now is the time to manifest and put forth 
all the power God hath given thee. 



MEDITATION VI. 

Queen, conceived without sin, pray for us. 

Queen of men, pray that we may come to 
know what is that progress of Christian wisdom 
which is wanted in this present time of trial to se- 
cure the future interests of mankind upon earth. 

In Rome there may be seen an humble sanc- 
tuary, the home for the last century of the body 
of the Blessed Leonard of Port-Maurice. By the 
side of the body there is an autograph letter of the 
holy man, which is also exposed to the veneration 
of the faithful. It contains an answer to the ques- 
tions which we are now seeking to clear up. The 
contents are startling, but the traces of heavenly 
illumination and divine inspiration are discernible. 
It speaks of the mystery of the Immaculate Con- 
ception, and declares that when the light of that 
fundamental truth shall shine forth in all its splen- 
dor, then will come the hour for the repose and 
peace of the world ; but that, until that time, <e we 
must pray and suffer, and be content to see the 
world in its present state of confusion." 

Blessed Leonard further declares that this light 
shall shine abroad after the Church has defined 



MEDITATION VI. 



27 



the dogma of the Immaculate Conception to be an 
article of faith. The prophecy may turn out un- 
true, but it contains an element of truth to which 
our hearts should cling with faith and love; I 
mean the principle which is the foundation of the 
holy man's pious convictions, namely, that the 
world is not to remain forever in its present state 
of confusion ; that man is destined to order the 
world in peace, justice and truth ; that the pro- 
gress of Christian wisdom will bring rest to the 
earth ; and that this progress will consist in bring- 
ing to light, applying, and fully developing the 
mystery of Mary, which is also the mystery of hu- 
man nature, and the whole glorious extent of the 
merits and of the dignity of the Immaculate Vir- 
gin, Mother of the Incarnate Word. 

Queen, conceived without sin, pray for us ! 
Pray, that in these our days the manifestation of 
this mystery may become a shining light in thy 
Church. Pray that this manifestation may be 
such a progress of Christian wisdom as S. Vincent 
of Lerins speaks of in the same pages which warn 
the Christians of his days against dangerous novel- 
ties. " Shall there never be," he exclaims, " any 
religious progress in the Church of Christ ? Assur- 
edly there shall be very great progress. And 
who would be so envious of man, so hostile to 
God, as to wish to hinder it? Yes, there shall be 
progress in the faith, but no change in the faith; 
let then understanding, knowledge and wisdom 
grow and develop from age to age, both in the 
universal Church and in the individual soul. In 
the course of time, the old doctrines of the heav- 
enly philosophy must be more and more cultivated 



28 



MEDITATION VI. 



and explained ; they can never be changed, mu- 
tilated or maimed ; but they must acquire more 
clearness,, evidence and precision, while they pre- 
serve the fullness, integrity and propriety that 
they originally possessed."* 

" Yes," says another learned theologian, "we 
must think of the mystical body of Jesus Christ 
as we think of His natural body. Scripture says 
that as He increased in age, He grew also in wis- 
dom and in grace. It was not that the eternal 
wisdom of God, even when clothed in our flesh, 
could increase in knowledge or in holiness, but in 
condescension to the laws of our nature, He exhi- 
bited, day by day, more wisdom and more piety 
as He grew in age, although from the first moment 
of his conception He had been perfect wisdom and 
perfect holiness. So it is in a manner in the 
Church ; she brought forth from time to time the 
treasures of her tradition, and brought to light 
points of doctrine and practices of devotion which 
had not hitherto cropped out, because the season 
had not come to exhibit them, nor to develop their 
ancient traditions. The fullness of the Holy 
Ghost resides, and from the beginning has resided, 
in the heart of the Church, but she only exhibits 
herself in external action, according to the coun- 
sels of eternal Providence, which guides our 
whole race as if it were a single individual, and 
each individual as if he were all mankind, through 
the various stages of iife."f 

* Passage quoted in the Bull of Pius IX. 
t Thomassin, Treatise on the Feasts of the Church, Book 

n., c 9. 



MEDITATION VI. 



29 



Mary, conceived without sin, pray that in 
this season of darkness and discouragement some 
such splendid development of Christian wisdom 
and knowledge may flash upon us, and give fresh 
heart to those .who do believe, and fresh good- will 
to those who would believe. 

But if there is a point to which modern devel- 
opments must tend, it is doubtless the mystery of 
Mary, and not the mystery of the Word — the 
mystery of man, not the mystery of God. "There 
are many reasons," says a pious author, "why 
God willed that the mystery of Mary should dawn 
by degrees like the day; which, in its first faint 
glimmer, begins to disperse the gloom, till the sun- 
rise bursts forth into the full blaze of light. One 
reason, as theologians commonly say, is this: be- 
cause the Church is not founded on our Lady, but 
upon tier Son; therefore it was convenient that 
God should first make clear the truths of salvation, 
and afterwards in the superabundance of His 
goodness, should clear up others, which, though 
of less consequence, yet raise our minds to know 
Him better and to love Him more ardently." 

Mary, Queen conceived without sin, pray that 
a glimpse may be given to us, of the possibility at 
least, of this glorious development of the kingdom 
of God upon earth. 

The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin is a 
truth so deep, so fundamental, and so central, — 
it throws so strong a light on all the truths of faith, 
and even on all the truths of philosophy, that its 
fuller manifestation will perhaps contribute to bring 
about that intellectual revolution in the Christian 



30 



MEDITATION VI. 



world, and in the human mind, which clear-sighted 
souls are looking for. 

This inteUectual revolution may give to Europe 
a new age of faith, of light, and of unity. Once 
united, the nations of Europe might soon convert 
the whole world to the Gospel; it would be the 
grandest epoch of history, it would be the manifest 
coming of the kingdom of Jesus Christ; it will be 
the beginning, perhaps, of a series of ages, like 
those announced by S. John, the beloved disciple, 
after he had seen the * * great sign " which appeared 
in heaven. "The woman, clothed with the sun, 
and crowned with stars" — "I saw an angel com- 
ing down from heaven, with a great chain in his 
hand, and he laid hold on the spirit of error, the 
old serpent, to bind him for a thousand years, 
that he should no more seduce the nations." — 
(Apoc. xx. 1-3.) 

O Mary, Queen conceived without sin, may we 
not hope that this clear announcement of the dogma 
of thine absolute purity may announce to us the 
time of thy final victory over all heresies? — that 
time when the angel, with the unbroken chain of 
truths in his hands, shall bind for many a long 
year the spirit of error which seduces whole nations. 

my God, if I had real belief that my prayers 
and my works could contribute to the progress of 
the Christian truth upon earth ; if I believed that 
I might add my mite to that mighty attraction by 
which Thou wouldst draw the world out of its de- 
gradation and raise it to justice, light and peace; 
I feel that such a faith would rouse me from my 
slumbers. Poor and weak as I am, I would give 



MEDITATION VII. 



31 



the little that I have, I would do the little that I 
can. I would give myself entirely for the truth. 
I would live and die to obtain a ray of light the 
more for this benighted world. 



MEDITATION VII. 

Queen, conceived without sin, pray for us. 

What, then, is the mystery of Mary? and what 
her immaculate conception? 

A few comparisons may help us to understand 
the question. 

Mankind is a single organized body — a whole, 
which, though made up of so many multitudes, yet 
before God has in one sense but one heart, one soul, 
one blood. From the moment that sin first in- 
fected the whole mass, and plunged it into the 
abyss of self-love and concupiscence, God willed 
to prepare for the world a seed and a root of grace 
and salvation. This head, which shall be blessed 
throughout all generations, is the Word made flesh. 
But God prepared for the Word a pure spot, where 
He might unite Himself to human nature; this 
immaculate spot, the virginal spot in the world of 
souls, is the Virgin conceived without sin. 

This sinlessness is a privilege of Mary, given to 
her for all. God willed to prepare for the Son of 
justice a sanctuary in the bosom of mankind, that 
the day of light and divine love might once more 



32 



MEDITATION VII. 



arise, after it had been clouded over by darkness 
and evil. 

The Virgin, Qneen of mankind, is, after Jesus 
Christ, the centre and heart of the human race. 
Mankind, let us never forget, forms but one body, 
"We are all one body," (Rom. xii. 5,) says St. 
Paul. This body, thus united, has a heart; and 
this heart is the soul of Jesus Christ, to which is 
united the soul of Mary. Mary is essentially the 
human side in the heart of regenerate mankind ; 
Jesus is at once the human and the divine. This 
soul, the centre of the spirit-world, or rather these 
two souls, which were never soiled by original 
guilt, became the germ of the new life which was 
to be infused into the world. 

On such a wonderful subject, how many things 
might not be said ! The soul of Jesus and the soul 
of Mary, two souls in one, form the heart of man- 
kind. If people did but know what a heart is, 
even the material and visible heart, in the midst 
of our human body! The heart is the principle 
of life; it gives life to our members, which natu- 
rally tend to death. Each separate member, if 
left to itself, would become exhausted and die. 
Out of the heart, the principle of life ceases not 
for an instant to repair this continual decay. By 
each pulsation it sends life through each member 
of the body, and also destroys the seeds of death 
which had there accumulated. Each beat of the 
heart is two-fold, and has two movements; by one 
it clears organs of spent blood — by the other it 
sends forth into them fresh living blood. It is the 
heart itself which is two-fold; it is like two hearts 
in one: the one more active, the other more pas- 



MEDITATION VII. 



33 



give; one which gives life, and the other which 
removes death to make way for life. The one en- 
livens, the other purifies. 

Such, also, in the centre of regenerate man- 
kind, is the office of its spiritual heart, of this heart- 
composed of two hearts living in one, the soul of 
Jesus and the soul of Mary. The soul of Jesus 
gives life to the heart of the world; the soul of 
Mary, by the grace of Jesus, restores that which 
was dead to life. She brings back to Him, who 
is the true Life, the spent blood of mankind, to be 
restored to life, and to be sent back by Jesus into 
the world full of life and of grace. The Word, by 
His incarnation, consecrated our blood, but it is the 
Virgin who gave Him matter for consecration. 

Perhaps another comparison, drawn fiom what 
passes in the heavens, or among the stars, or in 
the universe of worlds created by God, will be 
better understood. 

We must know then that all material bodies, of 
whatever form, or however disunited they may be, 
form one whole, and have one common centre of 
gravity.* We feel sure that it is a mathematical 
truth, that there is a centre of gravity in the uni- 
verse, and that relatively to the whole mass, this 
centre of gravity is always and necessarily immova- 
ble. The heavens revolve around it with the stars 
and all the groups of suns. And have we not an 
image of this every night, when we see the polar 
star itself alone immovable, in the midst of the 
others? As, therefore, there exists a centre of 

* Salazar and several other theologians have applied this 
comparison to the Blessed Virgin. 

3 



34 



MEDITATION VII. 



gravity in the visible universe, a mechanical rest- 
ing point for the world, immovable, and which in 
the midst of all the changes, disturbances and re- 
volutions that have befallen, or shall ever befall, 
universal matter, preserves an absolute and mathe- 
matical immobility — a centre point which a cele- 
brated astronomer has called the throne of God, 
around which all the stars revolve; so in like 
manner there is a point, a centre of gravity in the 
moral universe, a celestial resting place for souls, 
immovable and immaculate, in the midst of the 
agitation and troubles of evil and error. This 
point is the Incarnate Word ; but it is inseparably 
united to another point, the virginal point in the 
world of souls, which the Holy Scripture calls " the 
throne of God," and "the woman crowned with 
stars," and with it forms a two-fold centre. 

We may take yet another comparison from the 
knowlege of the human mind. 

Do we believe that the human is entirely falli- 
ble, or always, absolutely, and without exception 
infallible? Certainly neither the one nor the other. 
Error creeps into our thoughts and our faculties. 
Nevertheless, St. Thomas of Aquin and Bossuet, 
not to mention others, teach that our reason is 
based on an infallible point; failing which, our 
minds would necessarily be unable to arrive at any 
certainty. If my reason was fallible always, in ail 
things, without exception, nothing would be certain. 

I could not be sure of anything, not even of my 
own existence, nor that of God, nor that of the 
world, nor of revelation. There would be a posi- 
tive gulf forever impassable, fixed between the 
mind of man and all truth. But there is, in reality, 



MEDITATION VII. 



35 



a fundamental and central operation of the mind 
which does not deceive us. " There error enters 
not," says St. Thomas; and Bossuet exclaims, in 
his "Elevations sur les Mysteres," "0 my soul, 
listen in the depths of thy mind ! listen not in the 
regions of imagination, but listen where the truth 
makes itself heard, where pure and simple ideas 
have their abode. " This sanctuary, this interior 
depth, where truth shines clear , is the virginal 
point of the mind. 

In like manner, mankind collectively has its 
own virginal point : it is the Virgin conceived 
without sin, or rather it is the Virgin united to 
the manhood of the Saviour. God reserved for 
Himself this sanctuary, this immaculate taberna- 
cle in the bosom of fallen mankind. In the midst 
of our degraded mass, the grace of the Saviour has 
preserved a leaven of health, to be the divine an- 
tidote for our evils. Here is the mystery of Mary 
and of her Immaculate Conception. And if this 
great mystery is, as it were, an innate idea of our 
minds, an original impression upon our hearts, as 
it is on the visible heavens, and on the movements 
of the stars, does it follow that this mystery is only 
the necessary result of the nature of things? Far 
from it. It is, on the contrary, one more proof 
that God, to whose mind the whole creation is 
present from all eternity, who conceives at the 
same moment the world of nature and the world 
of grace, and who has only created the first as a 
means to the second, has seen good to make the 
first an image and a figure of the second, as the 
Old Testament is the figure of the eternal Testa- 
ment of the law of grace. 



36 



MEDITATION VII. 



my God, would that I might never lose sight 
of these great truths ! But how seldom does the 
smallest ray enter my mind ! Yet it is no wonder ; 
my thoughts run on all things except the truth ; I 
spend my time on anything rather than on the 
study of my religion and its mysteries; I let sleep 
consume more than a third part of my days; the 
care of my body claims a great part of my working 
hours; but who thinks of giving half an hour a 
day to meditate on the truth? When was there in 
my soul a silence of half an hour to listen to God? 
If in time past I have ever had a taste of this Sab- 
bath of the soul, it remains long in my memory as 
a revelation of a truer life ; but why do I never 
seek to renew the taste ? Why do I not let my soul 
rest in God for one short hour each day ? Why do 
not I strive to gain by prayer the light of truth, 
whose smallest ray kindles an enduring life in the 
soul, and enlightens forever the mind which it 
pierces ? Is it not for want of this inner vision that 
I too often understand nothing of the books I read, 
or of the discourses, the gospels and the truths 
which the Church sets before me? 

Mary, thou who art the centre of purity in the 
world of souls ; teach me to direct my soul towards 
that centre of my understanding and of my will, 
where the truth makes its voice to be heard. Main- 
tain me in the resolution of neglecting the outside 
of life, and of exploring its foundation, of inter- 
rupting, for an hour each day, my habitual inter- 
course with the outer darkness, to converse in si 
lence with the inner light which God kindles in 
the centre of the soul, where the mind strikes its 
roots in the heart, and the heart in God. 



37 



MEDITATION VIII. 

Queen, conceived without sin, pray for us ! 

Let us once more, with greater fervor, direct 
our minds to this mystery of Mary, and of her 
ever immaculate purity. It is the mystery of 
mankind, it is one of the roots of the Incarnation, 
it is one of the threads of the eternal history of 
mankind, of that providential plan which God de- 
signed from all eternity for the salvation of His 
creatures, and the glorifying of His works. 

Let us read and meditate that which the great 
St. Francis of Sales wrote about the plan of God's 
supernatural Providence: 

' 4 Every thing which God has done is designed 
for the salvation of men and of angels ; by atten- 
tion to the Holy Scriptures, and to the doctrine of 
the Fathers, we shall see that this is the order of 
Providence, so far as our weakness allows us to 
utter it. 

4 4 From all eternity, God considered that He 
was able to create an innumerable quantity of 
creatures of different perfections and qualities, to 
whom He might communicate Himself; and see- 
ing that among all the ways of communicating 
Himself, there was none so excellent as that of 
uniting Himself to some created nature, so that 
the creature should be, as it were, mortised and 
grafted into the God-head, so as to form with it 
one sole person, His infinite goodness, which is 
naturally inclined to communicate itself, resolved 
and determined to make a communication of this 



38 



MEDITATION VIII. 



kind, in order that, as from all eternity there is an 
essential communication in God, by which the Fa- 
ther communicates His whole and indivisible God- 
head to the Son in begetting Him, and the Father 
and the Son together in the procession of the 
Holy Ghost, communicate to Him also the unity 
of their own God-head ; in the same way this sover- 
eign mercy should be also so perfectly communi- 
cated to a creature, that the created nature and 
the God-head each preserving their own properties, 
should nevertheless be so united together as to be 
but one person.". . . 

4 'Thus, after the Providence of God had made 
from all eternity the project and design of all 
that He was to create, He willed and loved with 
a preference regulated by the order of excellence, 
first of all the most excellent object of His love, 
that is, our Saviour, and next in their order, the 
other creatures, according as they more or less 
subserve the honor and glory of this same Saviour. 

* ' Thus everything was created for this God-man, 
who on this account is called the first born of every 
creature, whom the Lord possessed in the begin- 
ning of His ways, before He had made any single 
thing, created in the beginning before the ages; 
for in Him all things were made, and all things 
are established in Him, and He is the head of the 
whole Church, having in all things, and every- 
where the primacy. And as in the vine which 
we plant principally for its fruit, this fruit is the 
first thing in our desire and intention, although 
the leaves and the blossoms are before it in the 
order of nature; so the Saviour was the first in 
God's intention, and in that eternal plan which 



MEDITATION Vlli. 



39 



Providence made for His creation, and it was with 
a view to this desired fruit that the vine of the 
universe was planted, and the course of genera- 
tion was established, which, like leaves and blos- 
soms, were to go before as precursors and fitting 
preparatives for the production of that grape which 
the Spouse praises in the Canticles, and whose 
juice cheereth both God and men. 

"God had so mixed up the appetites of His 
creatures with their will, that the appetite forced 
not the will, but left it its liberty; and He fore- 
saw that a part, the smaller part of the angels 
would voluntarily renounce His holy love, and 
would in consequence lose their glory. But there 
was this difference between the nature of angels 
and that of men, that the angels could only sin by 
express malice, without any temptation or motive 
which could excuse them; whereas man was feeble 
by nature, a breath that passes and comes not 
again, subject to be surprised by temptation."* 

This is why the fall of the angels was irrepara- 
ble; but that of man, though irreparable by him- 
self, was redeemed by the infinite mercy and love 
of God. 

Let us try to understand the mystery of the 
fall, and of the redemption. 

We sometimes hear it said, Why did God 
create the world, if He foresaw that His work 
would be overcome by evil, and that the largest 
part of His creation would fall for ever under its 
yoke? 



* Traitd de 1'Amour d Xiqvl, book 2. chap. y. and vi. 



40 



MEDITATION VIII. 



But where do we see that the work of God has 
been overcome by evil? 

The work of God, as it existed in His idea from 
all eternity, is principally the God-man, for whose 
sake all the rest was made, who is the crowning 
fruit of the creation, and in comparison with 
whom, all the rest is nothing, since He is of infi- 
nite worth. Now this God-man was never over- 
come by evil, but overcame it. 

Next to the God-man in the work of the creation, 
stands His Mother, who by herself surpasses in 
excellence and worth, all other creatures; the 
Mother of God was never overcome by evil, or 
tainted by it, in any sense whatever. 

The third place in God's work is occupied by 
that great and overwhelming majority of the an- 
gels, who rejected the evil, and freely chose the 
good. 

In the fourth place, we find those immense 
multitudes of souls which lived only a few hours 
or a few days upon earth, and never actually 
sinned, but were only deprived by Adam's sin, of 
the holy state of original grace to which the Sa- 
viour has restored them. 

In the next place come those other legions of 
souls, which have sinned actually, but which the 
Redeemer has saved by the greater abundance of 
His grace. 

Now in order to create these numberless compa- 
nies of souls and spirits, able to chose the good 
part of the love of God, as God had chosen them, 
it was necessary to create them free. Hence it 
was also necessary to admit the possibility of several 
of these spirits and *ouls refusing to love God. 



MEDITATION VIII. 



41 



But this free rejection of God makes their worth 
incomparably less than that of the least of glori- 
fied spirits, and we might almost say that all of 
them together are become so insignificant through 
their approach to nothingness, that they are noth- 
ing in comparison to the least of the elect. 

Where, then, do we find that God's work has 
been overcome by evil? 

That part of creation which did not remain in 
the love of God is, in comparison to the city of 
God, but a wreath of smoke and a vain and empty 
shadow. The other part is the great body of 
creatures predestined to eternal love. 

This is the mystery of the fall. But the mys- 
tery of redemption requires a new illustration. 
We must know her who co-operated with the work, 
our Queen conceived without sin, as well as the 
cause, the author, and the principle of the work, 
who is God himself our King. 

4 'God," continues St. Francis of Sales, " pre- 
pared for His most holy Mother a favor worthy 
of the love of a Son, who being all- wise, all- 
mighty, and all-good, could prepare Himself a 
Mother after His own heart. He willed, then, 
that His redemption should be applied to her in 
the way of a preservative, so that the sin which 
descended from generation to generation should 
not touch her, and that His sacred Mother, like a 
thing set apart for her Son, should be redeemed 
by Him not only from damnation but from all 
danger of damnation, and should be assured of all 
grace in all its perfection, and should thus come 
forth like a beautiful morning, which having once 
begun its dawn, continually increases its bright- 



42 



MEDITATION VIII. 



ness even to perfect day. Wonderful redemption, 
masterpiece of the Redeemer, first of all redemp- 
tions, whereby the Son, in the true filial tender- 
ness of His heart, forestalled His Mother with the 
blessings of His mercy, and preserved her not 
only from sin like the angels, but also from all 
danger of sin, and from all the difficulties and 
hindrances to the exercise of holy love. And 
thus He protests that among all the reasonable, 
creatures whom He has chosen, His Mother is 
His dove, His only one, His all-perfect and all- 
cherished one, best beloved beyond all proportion 
or comparison."* 

This, then, was the eternal plan of the world. 

The Sun of justice, truth, and holiness, en- 
lightens all things, vivifies all with His divine 
light. This Sun is the incarnate Word, the splen- 
dor of eternal light, the Man-God; but it is also 
the Mother of the Word, who is perfectly united 
to Him, who is in Him as He is in her, who 
clothes Him as she is clothed by Him, who bears 
Him in her womb, and at the same time is en- 
compassed, enfolded, and encircled by Him, for 
she is truly "that woman clothed with the sun," 
of which Holy Scripture speaks; therein dwell two 
human hearts united in everlasting purity, that of 
Christ and that of His holy Mother. This is the 
centre, the immutable foundation of the work of 
God. Round this heart of the world revolve 
millions of other hearts and souls united to it, 
which in spite of many trials and fallings away, 
return again and again to their allegiance; and 



* Traits de 1' Amour de Dieu, ii.6. 



MEDITATION VIII. 



after long wanderings in exile, and frequent 
vicissitudes of fortune, have once more regained 
their centre, the source of true light and true love, 
and the place of eternal repose; who either by 
love, by free choice, by sufferings, or by labors 
and combats, have won back their inheritance, 
and have found how the Father of the world, 
together with the Mother of the Word and of 
mankind, is the brother, the friend, the husband 
of souls, the perfect model and principle of all 
love, of all strength, and of the courage which is 
needed for those labors and sufferings which lead 
men to heaven. This is the work of God. 

And beyond the immense sphere of light which 
forms the aureole of the sun, its rays drive away 
and dissipate like smoke or shadows those con- 
temptible and guilty souls, who are without love 
and full of darkness, and who have chosen to re- 
main isolated and opposed to all, and outside of God. 

my God, I will henceforth have greater 
faith in the reality of this central sun of the jus- 
tice and truth, of the life and love of heaven, and 
also in the reality of the outer darkness of hell. 
I shall understand that like those wandering stars 
of which St. James speaks, I gravitate towards 
heaven, but that I may, like them, be carried out 
of my sphere of attraction by my heaviness, or by 
some false impulse, and be lost in the fathomless 
abyss. I see that the life of my soul is ever at 
war with these two contrary forces, which are 
known to all men by their effects, but of whose 
cause they are for the most part ignorant. These 
two forces must ever be acting upon us. Can 



44 



MEDITATION IX. 



heaven do otherwise than attract me? Here is 
one force. Can my own inertia, hurried along in 
the vortex of time, do otherwise than carry me 
away from heaven? Here is the second force. 
Can those spirits of light and of peace, who watch 
my conflict, do otherwise than draw me by their 
prayers and their love? And can the contagious 
example of the wicked, the spirit of unbelief, re- 
bellion and schism, the spirit of pride, self-love 
and sensuality, fail to allure me, unless I have 
overcome them and ejected them from my heart 
by my free-will? Now I know the meaning of 
these two attractions, and I shall be able to dis- 
tinguish their contrary movements within my soul, 
and to put in the scale of heaven the weight of my 
love, for as St. Augustine says, "My love is the 
weight which measures my worth." 



MEDITATION IX. 

Mother most pure, pray for us. 

Let us never be weary of endeavoring by 
prayer and meditation, by desire for light, and by 
thankfulness for its least ray, to go deeper and 
deeper into the thought of the mystery of Mary's 
Immaculate purity. This mystery is in some 
sort the vital centre of God's work, as well as its 
governing force, and the sure hope of those who 
are wrestling, and are still journeying on. 

If we wish for further enlightenment on this 
subject, let us seek it in the sublime teaching of 
St. Augustine: 



MEDITATION IX. 



45 



"Thou, Lord, hast taught me, by Thine 
All-powerful voice, speaking in the interior of my 
soul, that Thou alone art eternal, and immortal, 
that there is nothing variable in Thee ; that Thy 
will subsisted in its immutability before time was : 
for a will subject to change would cease to be an 
immortal will. I see these things in the light of 
Thy presence, Lord; but I pray Thee, grant 
me an increase of this light, and that under the 
influence of this revelation, I may dwell beneath 
Thy wings in humility and littleness. 

* 4 Thou hast again taught me, my God, by 
Thine All-powerful word, speaking in the midst 
of my soul, that all nature, and everything that 
is not Thyself, was made by Thee. That alone 
which is not, as well as every action of will which 
turns aside from Thee, who art, to that which is 
less, is not Thy work ; for these acts are evil and 
sin. Moreover, no sin can affect Thee, Lord, 
nor can in any way disturb the order of thy will. 
This, Lord, is what thou hast revealed to me 
in the light of Thy presence, and I pray Thee to 
grant me an increase of this light, that through 
this revelation I may for ever dwell beneath Thy 
wings in humility and littleness. 

4 'Still further hast Thou told me, by Thine 
All-powerful voice, speaking in the ear of my 
soul, of a created being, who, though she has no 
will but Thine, is not co-eternal with Thee; who 
by her constant chastity lived for Thee alone; 
and who, though she was capable of change, re- 
mained steadfast; she fixed her whole love on 
Thee, Lord, who art ever present, and there- 
fore had no doubt for the future, no remorse for 



46 



MEDITATION TV. 



the past, no vicissitudes to undergo, and no 
changes of season to experience. ever blessed 
is that soul by her firm adherence to Thy beati- 
tude, ever blessed by the eternal and intimate hos- 
pitality which she gives to Thee, and by the eter- 
nal brightness which she receives! And what 
shall I call the heaven of heavens, which is God's, 
except it be Thy dwelling, my God which con- 
templates Thee, which is blessed in Thy blessed- 
ness, without falling away from, or departing 
from Thee; a spirit all pure, and perfectly in 
union with Thee, who art the everlasting peace 
of the heavenly spirits and citizens of the city on 
high, far above this visible heaven. 

4 'Let the soul, then, which finds the way 
of this pilgrimage too long, understand these 
things; if even now she thirsts after Thee, if her 
tears are become her drink, if day by day she 
hears within herself the question, Where is now 
thy God? if even now she seeks and desires but 
one thing, that she may dwell forever in Thy 
house. my God, let her, if she can, under- 
stand that eternity is in comparison with time, be- 
cause even now Thy holy house, which has ever 
been with Thee, although it is not co-eternal with 
Thee, experiences no change of time, because it 
remains united to Thee, without inconstancy or 
change. This, God, is what I see in the light 
of Thy presence, and grant that this light may 
increase, and that through this revelation I may 
for ever dwell beneath Thy wings in humility and 
littleness." 

Thus speaks the great St. Augustine; and after 
this description of the most holy of creatures, 



MEDITATION IX. 



perfect in the contemplation of God, which has 
never fallen away, and which nothing has ever 
separated from God, he adds: 

* 4 Will you call that error which the truth 
teaches me, by God's All-powerful word, speaking 
to the ear of my soul ; what is there here for con- 
tradiction to contradict? 

* 1 Will you deny that there is such a perfect 
creature, continually united to the eternal and the 
true God, by so chaste a love, that without being 
co-eternal with Him, yet being never distracted 
from Him, she knows not time nor its changes, 
but ever remains in the repose of eternal contem- 
plation? Thou dost manifest Thyself to her, 
Lord, and it sufficeth her, and never do her de- 
sires tend towards herself, or towards aught but 
Thee. This is the house of God, a house not 
made of earth, nor even of the matter of the 
heavens; but spiritual, and partaking of thy eter- 
nity, because it is eternally without spot. Thou 
hast founded her for ever; it is a law which Thou 
hast made, and which shall not be broken. Yet 
this divine dwelling is not eternal, for it had a be- 
ginning, it was created. 

"Not that we can find any time before her, for 
wisdom was created before all things — not the 
Wisdom which is equal and co-eternal with God 
His Father, and our God, by whom all things 
were made, the Lord of heaven and earth; but 
that other created wisdom, the intellectual nature, 
which is light through the contemplation of the 
Light, and which, though created, is also called 
wisdom. As the light that illumines differs from 
the light that is illumined, so does the Wisdom 



48 



MEDITATION IX. 



that creates differ from created wisdom ; so does 
essential justice differ from our imparted justice. 
There is, then, a wisdom anterior to all created 
things, itself created; it is the intelligent and 
reasonable soul of Thy holy city, our heavenly 
Mother, which is free, and lives in heaven for 
ever; in that heaven of heavens which praises 
Thee, herself being the heaven of heavens, which 
is the Lord's; and although we find no time be- 
fore her, because she precedes the creation of 
time, yet before this wisdom there is the eternity 
of God who created her, and who gave her her 
beginning." 

Let us meditate carefully on this prayer, dedi- 
cated by the light of wisdom, and whose depth of 
doctrine has perhaps never been sufficiently com- 
mented on. 

And first we should notice that the illustrious 
Father of the Church, who is the chief authority 
in the West, here declares with a strength of affirma- 
tion which is seldom met with throughout his 
writings, that this doctrine was revealed to him 
by the Holy Spirit, with the clearness, and with 
the almighty power of a voice speaking to his 
soul. 

And what does he teach? He teaches that 
there is one sublime created being, who is our 
heavenly Mother, in whom God dwells, and who 
from the first hour of her creation lived without 
any change, or the least falling away, but always 
and entirely united to God. 

But who is this sublime creature? According 
to St. Augustine, it is she of whom Holy Scrip- 
ture speaks: "The Lord possessed me in the be* 



MEDITATION IX. 



49 



ginning of His ways, before He made anything 
from the beginning;" and elsewhere, "Wisdom 
was created before all things." 

Now, to whom does the Catholic Church apply 
these words of Holy Scripture? To the Virgin, 
Mother of God, and to the human nature of Jesus 
Christ. These well-known texts constantly occur 
in the office of the Blessed Virgin.* 

No doubt the holy doctor applies all he says 
here about created wisdom, to the world of an- 
gels ; for this heavenly society really is a creation 
which, from the very beginning, was faithful in 
the contemplation of God, without falling away, 
or change. But there is something above the 
angels; there is the Queen of angels, there is 
the human nature of the Saviour. In the inten- 
tion of God and in His divine plan, there existed 
before and above the angels the two crowning 
works of the creation, the human nature of Jesus 
Christ and the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of 
Jesus. The fore-ordained design of the Incar- 
nation, which implies the sublime vocation of 
Mary, is, as S. Francis of Sales explains it, the 
principle and the cause of the creation, and the 
beginning of the ways of God. If, then, there 
is a first and chief creation, which S. Augustine 
calls created wisdom, and which ever remains un- 
failingly united to God, so that nothing was ever 

* And therefore the very words which Holy Scripture uses 
of the uncreated Wisdom, and of his eternal generation, the 
Church uses both in her offices and in her liturgy, in reference 
to the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, which was determined 
in one and the same decree with the incarnation of the di- 
vine Wisdom. (Apostolic letters of Pius IX., touching the 
definition of the aogma of the Immaculate Conception.) 

4 



50 



MEDITATION IX. 



able to separate it from Him for a single instant, 
how can it be said that the Mother of the Word, 
who was destined from all eternity to be the Queen 
of this holy creation, in the same way as the In- 
carnate Word was to be its head and its king — 
how can it be said that the Mother of the Word 
Incarnate was ever, for a single instant, subject 
to the powers of darkness and separated from 
God, while the angels, her servants, persevered 
in their unchanging contemplation, and in their 
unfailing union with God?* 

Mary, who didst give to the Word His body, 
and thereby didst shed eternal light over the 
world, pray for us, that the light of these pro- 
found mysteries, which now glimmers upon us 
from afar, may shine more brightly before us, and 
that in this light we may for ever dwell beneath 
the wings of God, and under thy wings, Mother 
of souls, in child-like humility and littleness! 
My desire, Lord, is to enter into this light. 
I desire, like St. Augustine, to feel how I am an 
exile, to know what eternity is with regard to 
time, and to labor to liken to eternity the time 
which is given me. Eternal life in its fullness is 
the contemplation, the possession of light and 
love, without the possibility of change. Time, 
like the succession of which we are conscious, is 
the succession and change from night to day. 
My soul, in its present state, sees the light by fits 
and starts. The day of the soul, according to 
the masters of the spiritual life, is a ray which 

* "Always conversing with God, and joined with Him in an 
everlasting covenant, she was never in darkness, but always in 
light." (Apostolic letters of Pius IX.) 



MEDITATION IX. 



51 



shines by intervals. The soul which has had a 
glimpse of the light knows this well. She knows 
how soon the light grew pale, and then went out, 
and how when she sought it again, it was nowhere 
to be found. She had experienced a moment of 
life and joy and fervor; she thought it would 
continue on for ever; but time went on, its 
changeful wheel went round, and the sun buried 
all his warmth and light beneath the horizon. 
Regret and remembrance alone remain. Regret, 
for not having profited by the day. "Whilst you 
have the light, believe in the light," says the 
Saviour, ' ' that you may become children of the 
light." This is what I now intend to put in prac- 
tice, that the time Thou givest me may be the 
beginning of eternity. When the ray returns, I 
will believe in it more firmly ; I shall know that 
it is not my light, my God, but Thine; I 
shall know that the light will soon be darkened ; 
I will not delay, but will at once submit myself 
to Thee, Light of my soul, that I may become 
a child of light, according to Thy promise. Then 
the ray will not depart so quickly, the night will 
not come so soon. The days of my soul will 
grow longer, as when the sun approaches its sum- 
mer solstice. The daylight of my mind and my 
heart will be only interrupted by short nights, 
and perhaps before I enter into the full daylight 
of eternity, I also, like the saints, shall enjoy one 
of those long polar days which are such vivid 
types of eternity; nightless days, when the sun 
only stoops towards the horizon and touches it, 
to show when it should be midnight, but not to 
set behind it. 



52 



MEDITATION X. 

Mother Immaculate, pray for us. 

To throw light on the great mystery of huma» 
salvation, which comprises the victory over sib- 
the redemption of souls, and the channel of Re- 
demption, let us now have recourse to an authorit* 
yet higher than St. Augustine. Let us open the 
Holy Scriptures. 

We will not take isolated texts, and bring them 
together from all parts of the Bible, but we will 
read through whole chapters. Neither will we 
choose these chapters according to our own fancy; 
but we will take those which the Catholic Church 
has selected for the office of the Blessed Virgin. 
Let us listen with reverence to these words of 
pure inspiration, which are, as it were, the mysti- 
cal incarnation of Christ. And let us not forget 
that this created wisdom, whose praises we are 
reading, is the principle, the heart, the centre of 
all creation, and is the type, first of the human 
nature of the Saviour, and then of the Mother of 
God. 

4 'Wisdom bears in herself her own glory, 
which comes from God, and which shines forth 
before men. 

" She shall open her mouth in the assembly of 
saints, and shed abroad the Light of God. 

' 'In the midst of souls God exalts her and 
glorifies her in the fullness of holiness. 

4 1 Among the multitude of the elect, her glory 
is seen. She is blessed among the blessed, and 
she says : 



MEDITATION X. 



53 



"I am the first born of creatures, I came forth 
before all from the mouth of God. 

,{ By me that light arose in the heavens, which 
shall never fail, and like a fertile cloud I covered 
the earth. 

"My dwelling is in the centre of the universe, 
and my throne is the pivot of the worlds. 

"I alone am above the heavens; I alone have 
penetrated into the deep ; I have walked through 
the oceans of creation, and all its worlds, and in 
every nation, in every assembly of free beings, I 
am the Queen. 

1 ' By my power I am exalted above the most 
noble hearts, and I am more lowly than the hum- 
blest. In all this I do but seek repose in God, 
and peace in His inheritance. 

1 1 But the Creator of all things made known to 
me His Will. He that made me willed also to 
dwell in me, as in a tabernacle, and He said to 
me : Dwell among my people, share the heritage 
of those who are mine, and take root in the souls 
of my elect. 

* * 1 was created in the beginning and before all 
ages; I live in the age to come, and I minister to 
God in His holy dwelling place. 

"I am strength in holy souls, repose in the 
holy city, and in Jerusalem I am Queen. 

"I am the Queen of those chosen souls who 
inherit the portion of God, my abode is in the 
full assembly of saints. 

"I am the cedar of Lebanon, and the cypress 
of the Mountain of Sion; the palm tree of Cades, 
and the rose tree of Jericho; the rich olive tree 
of the plain, and the plane tree by the water's 



54 



MEDITATION X. 



side. I am like an aromatic balm, and the 
choicest myrrh; tlie purest perfumes are found in 
me. 

4 1 1 stretch out my boughs like the turpentine 
tree, and my branches are of honor and grace. 
"Iam the fruitful vine, I am its perfume and 

its fruit. 

U I am the mother of pure love, of filial fear, 
and of holy hope. 

44 In me is that grace which is the way and the 
truth; in me is the hope of life and virtue. 

44 Come to me, you who love me, and feed 
yourselves with my fruit. 

44 My spirit is sweetness itself, my inheritance 
is sweeter than honey. 

4 4 Time brings no forgetfulness to my memory. 

4 4 He that feeds on me shall yet hunger, and 
he that drinks of me shall yet thirst. 

4 4 He that harkeneth to me shall never be* con- 
founded, and he that works with me shall never sin. 

4 4 He that brings me to light, has eternal life. 

44 All this is the book of life, the covenant of 
the Most High, and the manifestation of truth. 

4 4 Moses gave the precepts of the law; he gave 
to Jacob an inheritance, and promises to Israel; 
but to David, his elect, was it given to beget the 
mighty King, who should sit upon the eternal 
throne. 

* 4 This is He who gives abundance of Wisdom, 
like the overflowing courses of the Tigris and the 
Phison. 

4 4 This is He who gives increase to the under- 
standing, as Euphrates increaseth its waters at 
the time of harvest. 



MEDITATION X. 



55 



"This is He who pours forth light and truth, 
as Gehon pours abroad its waters at the time of 
the vintage. 

4 4 He alone knows her in perfection; another 
weaker than He shall never know her entirely. 

"He is more than a river of wisdom, and more 
than an abyss of light. 

"I, wisdom, pour out the rivers which come 
from Him 

"I am the bed of the river, its source, its 
spring, the channel, by which it flows out of Para- 
dise. 

"I have but to say: I will water my gardens, 
my meadows; I will inundate them with fatness; 
and immediately the waters flow and the river be- 
comes like a sea. 

"Yes, I am the dawn which brings light to all, 
and before long I spread it afar. 

"I dive down into the lowest parts of the earth, 
I awaken those that sleep, and enlighten all who 
hope in God." (Eccle. xxiv.)* 

In this passage of Scripture we find the channel 
of graces, the dawn which is the precursor of the 
sun, the gate of heaven, the source and spring of 
the river which fertilizes the earth, the humility 
and purity which stimulate the hunger and thirst 
after justice and truth. Here we see the Mother 
of fair love and of holy hope, who is the deposi- 
tory of grace, of whom He was born, who is the 
way, the truth, and the life. We see here the 

* Although this translation seems to us exact, jet it cannot 
claim in any way the authority of the text approved by the 
Church. It should be compared with the text, but should be 
looked upon, at least in certain places, only as a paraphrase. 



56 



MEDITATION X- 



Queen of the holy city, the fellow-worker with 
God, the minister of His power; we see her 
who though God's creature, yet brought into the 
world the eternal Light, and we find innumerable 
other mysteries, the consideration of which would 
take up many days. 

And the Holy Spirit tells us that this wisdom 
shall endure throughout future ages, and that she 
shall contemplate the face of God in His heavenly 
dwelling-place for ever. 

The following is the other portion of the sacred 
text, which the Catholic Church uses in the offices 
of the nativity and the conception of the Blessed 
Virgin: 

"God possessed me in the beginning of His 
ways, before He brought forth any germ of 
creation. 

"I was predestined and ordained from all eter- 
nity, and I stood in the presence of God before 
the earth was made. 

* ' The depths were not as yet, and I was already 
conceived, nor had the fountains yet sprung out. 
I was born before the mountains or the hills were 
set up ; before the formation of the world and the 
first impulse of its movement I was begotten by 
God. 

" When God prepared the heavens I was pres- 
ent with Him; when He gave to matter its laws 
and its movement; when Ho launched forth the 
stars into space, and poised their yet fluid masses; 
when He gave the sea its limits, and the law 
which hinders it from passing its bounds; when 
He gave the globe of the earth its centre of gravity, 
I was with God, co-operating in all His works 9 



MEDITATION X. 



57 



full of joy in those first days of the world, always 
before His face, playing with delight in the midst 
of the new-created world, and above all in the 
souls of men." (Prov. viii. 22.) 

my God, it is then true that Thou hast spoken 
to the earth sacred words which reveal the secrets 
of heaven. Thou hast given holy books, inspired 
by Thine own Spirit, which contain truths whose 
meaning is unraveled by degrees, as the world 
advances and the Church goes on increasing. 
How is it that these books have been so little read 
and meditated on by me? Why have I not the 
inclination, the intelligence, and the curiosity to 
study them? I am too far removed from them in 
my heart and in my life. I have not within me 
a spark of that internal light without which I can- 
not comprehend the meaning of the divine words 
which sound on my ear. When I pass from the 
shallow clearness of common thoughts to the sacred 
text, all is dark. But to the contemplative soul 
this night will have its stars, and when she raises 
her thoughts to heaven, she will see that these 
stars are worlds, or rather suns and centres of 
systems. Lord, I will behold Thy heaven and 
Thy stars ! says the prophet. I will say the same. 
I hope also one day, by means of prayer, to at- 
tain this state of contemplation, this height whence 
the soul begins to see heaven, and to discover its 
mysteries beneath the letter of holy writ. 

Mary, conceived without sin, who wert not 
only filled with wisdom, but wert in some sort 
wisdom itself — that created wisdom, in whose 
praise the Holy Scriptures employ all the wealth 



58 



MEDITATION XI. 



of deepest poetry, — unfold to the Christians of 
this our age the meaning of the Scriptures, that 
they may see thee therein ; and if the Scriptures 
are truly, as St. Augustine says, a kind of incar- 
nation of Christ, let them learn to contemplate 
the Mother of Christ as present where Christ is, 
in the same way as on the altar we recognize the 
blood of Jesus Christ which was derived from 
that of the v irgin, the Mother of regenerated 
man. 



MEDITATION XL 

Queen, clothed with the sun, pray for us I 

Let us meditate on this glorious and wonderful 
title which the beloved disciple was inspired by 
God to give to the Blessed Virgin, who was made 
his Mother by the word of the Saviour on the 
cross. 

St. John, in the vision of Patmos, exclaims: 
"A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman 
clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, 
and on her head a crown of twelve stars, bearing 

a child in her womb a man-child, who was 

to rule all nation s." (Apoc. xii.) 

The woman who brings forth the King of na- 
tions is the Virgin. She then must also be the 
woman clothed with the sun. But what is this 
sun if it be not the Sun of justice, the Word of 
God? 

St. John's wonderful words show us the invisi- 
ble world of souls under the image of the visible 



MEDITATION XI. 



59 



world of the stars. And it would be impossible 
to have any symbol at once so beautiful and so true. 

The stars are grouped in clusters and act on 
each other with forces which bind them together 
in indissoluble unity. So it is with souls ; all are 
rooted in God, each attracts the rest, all support 
each other. 

But these planetary stars have a common cen- 
tre, from which they are all produced. God 
brought them forth, each in its time, from their 
common source. So it is with souls in the order 
of grace. There is a primitive pair, from whom 
all descend ; the sacred pair, divine and human — 
the Father and the Mother of souls. 

These stars moreover, revolve round their mo- 
tionless centre, and all receive from its life light 
and heat. So it is with souls. They all revolve 
round the centre which supports them, and thence 
they derive life, light and heat. 

The centre of these stars is itself a globe, of 
the same matter and the same nature as the rest, 
only this central world is clothed with light, while 
the other worlds are not. 

So is it with souls. There is but one which is 
clothed with the sun. The others live in the ex- 
terior light of the sun, beyond the aureole, of 
which she alone occupies the inner most centre. 

And in this symbol I read the whole history of 
souls. No one has yet found a suitable compari- 
son between the state of souls in their journey 
through time, and the state of their earthly habi- 
tations. The orbs which whirl round the sun give 
\ wonderfully accurate notion of the state of our 
ouls in this life. 



60 



MEDITATION XI. 



Enter into your soul and view it in this light 
What do you see? 

I see, first of all, that my soul is always active, 
never at rest; she is ever tending and aspiring to 
something she has not; she tends and aspires to 
some better state, to some higher life. My soul 
is ever in motion, wandering and planetary like 
the earth which carries me. My soul is ever look- 
ing forward to the morrow, and hurrying over her 
days in hopes of finding a better. 

The earth, which travels so fast, moves not faster 
than my soul. Of these two planets my soul 
is the more active ; she it is who would often has- 
ten the speed of the vessel, and who cries out with 
the Prophet, either by desire or by prayer: Lord, 
shorten the time, hasten the end. 

But is my soul, though ever desiring better 
things, always advancing in goodness? Does she 
march straight towards her life, her light, her 
happiness, towards justice and truth? No. if ] 
have any quality at all, it is changeableness. 
The softest and brightest flashes of light are fol- 
lowed by the most painful darkness, the deepest 
gloom. Thus my soul passes from day to night, 
and from night to day, like the earth; the more 
my mind labors to approach the truth the more 
clearly it sees that the day turns naturally to 
night, and the night to day. I witness the dawn 
in my soul, I see the dawn brightening into day ; 
a day sometimes clear, sometimes cloudy; but as 
sure as noon-day comes I see the light, always un- 
certain, begin to wane, to darken into twilight 
and vanish into night. But neither in the earth, 
nor in my soul, is the movement useless that car- 



MEDITATION XI. 



(31 



ries us over from day to day. For through all 
these alternations of light and darkness, unless my 
soul transgresses her law by abusing her liberty, 
she sees her days lengthen and her nights shorten, 
as she advances in light. She perceives that the 
progress is real, and that the movement tends to 
something. The gifts of life develop within me 
first the flower then the fruit, beginning with the 
least, going on to the more precious, and ending 
with the two great supports of my life. But al- 
ready, whilst these fruits are ripening, the days 
have begun to shorten ; my soul no longer enjoys 
the same fullness of light, the same abundance of 
sap, the same warmth, the same glory. She sees 
with, grief that her life is wanning, in spite of all 
her efforts; she feels that her en'd is approaching, 
and that death must come. Then she droops her 
branches, she retires little by little into herself ; 
and as in a plant that lives but a year, all that is 
seen dies down while its life concentrates itself in 
the roots under ground, till spring comes again; 
so shall my soul quit the visible world, she shall 
leave her body and all her earthly trappings, and 
shall concentrate herself in God, her indestructi- 
ble root till the Father summons her again to 
life. Thus my soul, like the earth or the planets, 
has her days and her years, and the world is a 
book wherein I read the phases of her life. 

Still this is but a feeble comparison; for the 
earth and its productions are only symbols for our 
instruction, they are figures which write what God 
dictates, and obey Him in all things. The soul, 
on the contrary, is free. By the abuse of her 
liberty, the soul may change this order. At 



62 



MEDITATION XI. 



times she shortens days that God would lengthen ; 
she prevents the gathering in of the harvest, 
though God sows the seed and sends His sun to 
ripen the fruit. Sometimes even she closes her 
life with refusing to return to God. 

The soul is capable of sinning : she does sin— 
we see it every day. She lives or dies, she 
waxes or wanes according to her free choice. 
She undergoes also, in her moral life, an alterna- 
tion too little understood; an alternation of 
strength and. weakness in her combat with evil; 
of strength which God gives, of weakness which 
He permits; a strength and weakness, given and 
permitted to teach us to conquer and to grow in 
strength. Yes, each soul during the journey of 
this life bears within her both weakness and 
strength, both virtue and sin. There are seeds 
of virtue, principles of an eternal law, which the 
Word by His continual presence preserves within 
us; and there is original sin, which by its nature 
inclines always to actual sin, and which man by 
the help of God is bound to overcome. 

Faith teaches us, and reason and experience 
prove that no man can, by himself, conquer sin, 
nor advance in the knowledge and practice of 
virtue, nor bear fruits of justice for the life to 
come. "Without the help of God, there would be 
neither lengthening of the day nor season of fruit- 
fulness, neither flowers, nor fruit. Left to him- 
self man would continually wane, and would bring 
gradual decay on all he touched ; the first occasion 
of temptation and estrangement from God would 
necessitate a fall, and man would be precipitated 
through the darkness to the chill embrace of death, 



MEDITATION XI. 



63 



like a star shot out from its orbit, and no longer 
revolving round its centre. 

But God has constituted a moral world in which 
life is possible, and in which life must triumph for 
all men who do not absolutely reject it. 

He has placed, in the midst of the multitudinous 
assembly of souls, a centre of life, of light and 
of strength, as in the midst of the universe He 
has placed the sun. 

The visible sun is not that universal aether 
which percolates and pervades every atom of each 
world, and which is the principle of all light, of 
all movement, and of all force, an invisible fluid 
that supports, envelops, and penetrates all visible 
things; but the centres of systems, the suns which 
we see are incarnations of this fluid, attached to 
an orb of the same substance and nature as the 
planetary bodies, which in themselves are dark 
and opaque. 

Yes, there is a mass of common matter, an earth 
like ours, in the centre of each system, and with 
it are bound up all the active and sensible forces 
of the universal aether. This central mass is en- 
veloped with an immense atmosphere of light and 
heat. And this solar atmosphere is the source of 
light. It is the source of the force which supports 
the planets, which moves them, illuminates them, 
and warms them ; it is the centre which attracts 
them all towards itself, and prevents their motion 
degenerating into an endless tumble through space. 
It rolls each planet on its axis, and causes the al- 
ternations of day and night, and the annual suc- 
cession of the seasons. 

This is an image of the sun of souls, which is not 



64 



MEDITATION XI. 



only the eternal and creator Spirit, such as He is 
in Himself. It is not simply the great God, every- 
where present, and pervading all beings with His 
own essence. It is not the pure absolute infinite 
Being who is invisible to us. It is the same God, 
undoubtedly, but in His new form, as incarnate in 
our nature, and in a being like ourselves. Here is 
the source which supplies all the wants of our souls ; 
here is the centre, the force which holds and bears 
them up, which enlightens, warms and vivifies 
them. It is He who never ceases to attract them 
lest their motion should become an eternal fall ; it 
is He who renews the light of each soul, after it has 
been buried in darkness ; it is He who allows temp- 
tation to endure but for a season, and then causes 
it to give place to light and strength. But the true 
sun, the Incarnate God, who is at once both earth 
and sether, matter and force, two elements radi- 
cally distinct, but perfectly combined in the unity 
of light, this Sun, I say, is not in solitude at the 
centre of the world. As the inspired word of St. 
John assures us, He has clothed with His radiance 
the woman from whom he sprang. And in the 
same way as beneath the shining light which is 
properly the sun, astronomers see at times a kernel, 
a globe, an earth, which by itself would be dark 
and opaque like our earth; so also, but much more 
surely, the true centre of the world of souls, is the 
great sign of which St. John speaks, "the woman 
clothed with the su?i," with the great light who is 
her Son, who is her God. So that the divine Sun 
of Justice, who became incarnate on this earth, 
was not content with merely deriving from this cen 
tral earth the substance which He united to His 



MEDITATION XI. 



65 



divinity ; it pleased Him also that this chosen earth, 
by a singular privilege, should continue in Him, 
should remain there immoveable like Himself, in 
the midst of their planetary globes ; it pleased Him 
that she should be there without alternation, in the 
midst of worlds ever alternating ; He would not 
suffer that this chosen earth, the Mother of the 
.Day, should ever have been shrouded in night. 
It pleased Him that she should always have dwelled 
and ever should dwell in the light, and should be 
clothed with it in all ways through all time. It 
pleased Him to keep her altogether immaculate. 

Thus, if it is a question why the central earth 
is not planetary, like other globes, we say that, 
by her very centrality, she must necessarily be in 
repose, while all the rest, being at a distance from 
the centre, have no choice but to revolve round 
; the cii'cumference. 

If you would know why this earth alone was 
1 never buried in night, we say, as she provided the 
sun with the fuel from which his flames shine forth, 
she is necessarily girt round and absorbed in his 
radiance. The night which all other orbs must 
: feel, because they are opaque and at a distance 
from the sun, is impossible for her, who though 
dark in herself like the others, is preserved from 
all the shades of night, by the flame which she 
feeds, and which clothes her with the day as with 
a garment. 

This is the woman clothed with the sun ; this is 
the one chosen soul whose garment is the sun of 
justice. How could the night of sin ever have 
darkened around her? It may darken around all 
other souls, she alone is excepted. Why should 



66 



MEDITATION XI. 



there be this exception ? Because it is in the con- 
stitution of the world. The world of souls is a 
living system; and in every system the central 
body stands alone, apart from all the rest. The 
central point remains immoveable while all the rest 
revolve around it. When, as in our solar system, 
the central body is surrounded with a luminous 
atmosphere, that body alone is within the atmos- 
phere, all the rest are without; it alone has the 
atmosphere all round it, all points of its surface 
are in the light; the other orbs are only illumi- 
nated on one side, while the other is plunged in 
darkness and shadow. 

But why was the world made on this plan ? Why 
should there be a centre ? Why has the centre 
these prerogatives? Why do life, force, and 
light, come from it? I cannot tell why it is so, 
but I see that it is ; when the question is about 
the material world I see with my eyes ; when the 
question is about the spiritual world, why should 
I not believe? Perhaps this plan makes the 
world of souls the most exact image of God. In 
any case, is not this the only arrangement that 
can reduce all to unity ? The centre is the unity 
in which all ought to live ; the prerogatives of this 
centre are the treasures of all. Is not this 
arrangement also the only one which could make 
the world a school for educating- the freedom of 
created spirits? 

My God, in all this beautiful imagery which my 
mind has been dwelling on, is there not more to be 
found than a mere temporary food for the mysti- 
cal soul who seeks in all things the image of what 
she loves? Is it not true that in the whole of Thy 



MEDITATION XI. 



67 



work, as in a book may be read the mysteries of 
eternity? Thou Greatest and governest all com - 
formably to Thyself, Lord ; Thy eternal plan is 
the image of Thyself. Thy consubstantial image, 
Thy Word Incarnate in Thy work is the end of 
Thy work, it is its principle, its reason, and its 
cause, as it is also its consummation. But after 
Him the principal part of Thy work is that created 
being who, from all eternity, was destined by Thy 
wisdom to give a body to the Incarnate Word, to 
conceive the Eternal Word, and to spread It abroad 
in ever-increasing abundance over that which did 
not as yet exist. Behold, Lord, this is Thy 
Sun, a union of the Incarnate Word, and of the 
Mother who conceived the Word. Around this 
Sun Thou hast planted in Thy love other souls, 
that is, other centres of love, that they may drink 
in its light, and become like to it. These are the 
stars gifted with intelligence and free-will, which 
surround Thy Sun, and which crown the woman 
clothed with the Sun. When Thou hadst thus de- 
signed the world of souls, it pleased Thee to make 
the world of bodies in like sort, and Thou didst 
create it as we see it, because all things are crea- 
ted by Thee comformably to Thyself, and accord- 
ing to Thy eternal plan, which is no other than 
Thine own image. 

The only thing, Lord, which Thy visible 
world does not teach us, is how these planetary souls 
can come to their eternal and unchangeable per- 
fection, or how souls illuminated by an outward 
light, can become self-luminous, and the centres 
of an atmosphere of light. This is only taught 
us by Thy Gospel. 



68 



MEDITATION XII. 



But whatever may be the uncertainty and the 
weakness of our suppositions, Lord, one thing 
is true, that my soul is a pilgrim, and that she 
takes repose. She has only a partial light, which 
comes but at intervals, while she seeks a light 
which is full and enduring. Thus is it with all 
men. 

Therefore it is good for us to know the laws and 
the source of light, "by what way the light is 
spread," * that we may come to it, and bear its 
fruits. 



MEDITATION XTL 

Queen of Ages, pray for us. 

If Thou art the King of Ages, Lord Jesus, 
Thy Mother is the Queen of Ages, for she is by 
Thy grace, for ever and in all things, all that 
Thou art by nature and by right. 

Do thou, then, Queen of Ages, pray for us! 
Pray for the age in which we live, when the Church 
has raised thine entire and immaculate purity to 
the dignity of a dogma of faith. 

But what is this age in which we live? And 
what must we ask for it? 

An age has always a two-fold character. In 
every age there are two ages: a holy age, and an 
evil age. The age as it is given by God, and the 
age such as it is made by man. There is the spirit 
and the idea with which God inspires each epoch, 



# Job xxxrvi 24 



MEDITATION XII. 



69 



and there is the perversion which the wicked, the 
obstinate and the blind introduce into this divine 
idea. The evil age is that of which it is said : 
* ' To corrupt and to be corrupted is the spirit of 
the age;" and the good age is that which the 
prophet speaks of in these words: " Grant us, 
Lord, to know Thy way upon earth, and Thy salu- 
tary dealings with all people." The knowledge 
of the ways of God in every epoch and in every 
nation, is the spirit of the good age. What then 
is the characteristic of the evil age? 

As evil is nothing of itself, but only an abuse 
or travestie of good, so the evil age exists not of 
itself, it is but the wrong side of the good age. 
It is an abuse, a perversion, a parody which de- 
grades the idea of the Providence of God and His 
inspiration into the Utopias of the obstinate portion 
of the human race. 

Thus, when in the first ages of the Church, the 
Christian doctrine shone forth like the sun, and 
darted its light into all hearts, there arose in the 
old world an antagonistic philosophy, which mim- 
icked the Christian doctrine for the purpose of 
opposing it. This philosophy derived' its existence 
and strength wholly from Christianity, which it 
perverted and parodied. This was the evil age in 
opposition to the good age. 

So also, when God made known to His Church 
that the moment was come for a mortal and decisive 
combat between truth and error, the whole world 
heard His voice. The old world, as well as the 
Church, saw that blood must flow. Then the chil- 
dren of the holy age shed their blood, and those 
of the evil age shed the blood of others. The evil 



70 



MEDITATION XII. 



age always works in contradiction to the idea with 
which God inspires the holy age : it reverses the 
idea of God. It slays, while the people of God 
are slain for the truth. 

And in more modern days, after God had given 
to the world two such bright examples as St. 
Vincent of Paul, and Fenelon, the idea of God was 
so clearly put forth, that none could help under- 
standing it. Love and charity : love for all man- 
kind was then the inspiration of Providence. But 
the Church, or the holy age, saw the source of this 
love in the divine Heart of Jesus ; and the perverse 
age, the evil and separated portion, found the 
source of this love in the affections of the carnal 
heart, boiling over with its own vicious passions. 
And whilst the Church adored the Sacred Heart of 
Jesus Christ, and looked upon it as her source of 
life, her model and centre, the perverse age came to 
adore two hearts which it is difficult to speak about. 

Behold, on the altar of God, the nameless pro- 
fanation of a woman's heart, gorged with dishonor ! 
Behold another heart, the heart of a hangman 
gorged with blood, carried through the streets in a 
vessel of gold, with songs of triumph, as the Chris- 
tian age carries in procession the Body and Blood 
of J esus ! 

They rejected the worship of the Heart of Jesus 
and of the heart of Mary as superstitious, and they 
bow down before the heart of a harlot, and the 
heart of the greatest and most notorious of assas- 
sins ! Behold the contrast between the love of the 
wicked age, and the love of the holy age! 

But to come to the age in which we live. What 
is the present inspiration of God? What is the 



MEDITATION XII. 



71 



divine idea which gives force and movement to the 
times in which we live? It is not difficult to see it; 
every eye sees it. The mission of this age is this: 
— God would have this age carry out the second 
part of the law in a greater degree than was done 
formerly. The first part consists in loving God 
above all things. The second consists in loving 
one's neighbor as oneself ; and this second com- 
mandment, says the Scripture, is like to the first ; 
it is the same under another aspect. Well, it is 
this aspect of the eternal law, which God seems to 
wish especially to bring before us. He shows us 
the fields whitening with their human harvest 
already ripe, and He would make us see more and 
more clearly what is the human harvest that we 
have to gather in. 

Let us consider and meditate, first of all from 
another point of view, on this wonderful truth. 
I see that the idea which the age ought to have 
and has, is the idea of the grandeur and dignity 
of man; and its inspiration is the love of mankind. 
This is the idea of the evil age, as well as of the 
good age. Only the holy age understands these 
things according to God and His Gospel, whilst 
the evil age, as it always does, reverses the idea^, 
and destroys it by reversing it, and denies it while 
asserting it. 

What is the idea which this perverse age has of 
the dignity of man? It thinks and declares that 
human nature is pure, spotless, free from original 
sin, without lawless desires, and impeccable, that 
its passions are perfections, its deformities beauties, 
and that the works of the flesh are holy. Human 
nature, they say, is divine, it is God ! Emancipate, 



72 



MEDITATION XII. 



then, this enslaved God; let us emancipate /d«~ 
selves from faith, from law, and from consci^/ict. 
We will no longer obey, but rule, we will x-eiga 
by the free and full development of our whoke na- 
ture, and of every one of its powers ; and this shall 
be the reign of God on earth. This is a true pic- 
ture of the doctrine of these evil times ; and I now 
perceive that it is but a perversion of (rod's revela- 
tion ill understood. 

God wishes to raise us with a mighty hand ; He 
wishes to inspire us with courage, and rescue us 
from the frightful debasement into which the Chris- 
tian soul has been cast by the melancholy theology 
of the Protestants and Jansenists. God wishes 
us to appreciate the dignity and grandeur of human 
nature, notwithstanding its visible weaknesses and 
its present misery. For this purpose, He shows 
us, by secret inspirations, and still more clearly 
by the voice of the Church, through the mouth of 
His vicegerent on earth, first of all, that human 
nature is so noble, and so completely the image of 
God, that it is free — that man is free to make and 
to choose his eternal destiny ; that being evidently 
in a fallen state — as we see — and having fallen by 
an act of free-will, nevertheless the fall is not abso- 
lute, but reparable; that in each soul, the fall is 
not so entire, but that many noble powers still re- 
main within it; that reason and liberty still dwell 
there, though in a feeble state ; that the grace of 
God is ever pursuing each soul, and that the soul 
may correspond to it. But this is not all. The 
great truth which God proposes to our faith is that 
all mankind forms one whole, a single body, of 
which, as St. Paul savs, we are all members. 



MEDITATION XII. 



73 



Leap for joy, then, ye men of every age ; however 
humble they may be, let all members of this great 
body leap for joy. For its heart in some real 
sense is their own heart, and it has never been 
tainted with evil. The first heart of mankind, 
from which we all came, our first father and 
mother, were created immaculate. This first heart, 
or first couple, abused its freedom and sinned; 
and was replaced, or rather had been from all 
eternity in the foreknowledge of God, replaced by 
a heart still more free, but altogether sinless ; it 
had been replaced by an atoning couple, which 
was to be, and which is the origin and the centre 
of our renewed nature, the life-giving spring of 
regenerated mankind. Leap for joy again, for 
this is not all; this second heart of the world, this 
second pair is not merely man filled with God's 
grace ; in this second heart, the principal part is 
God Himself, God made man, and the secondary 
and inferior element of our universal heart is that 
sacred Vessel in which God was borne. In the 
mysteries of this great heart of the world, and 
which is thy heart too, man, mankind, by one 
of its daughters, is mother of God Nay, more, 
human nature is united with God in the Incarnate 
Son. Your Father, your own Father, the second 
Adam, is God Himself become man to be one of 
you, as Adam was one of you; and your own 
Mother, the second Eve is Mother of God. Glori- 
ous in truth is the dignity of mankind, for its 
heart is God made man; and a woman made 
Mother of God. It is true, then, as this evil age 
asserts without understanding it, that human na- 
ture is altogether pure, spotless, without original 



74 



MEDITATION XII. 



sin, without concupiscence, sinless, and impecca- 
ble, that its divine emotions, love and pity are 
perfections, that it has no deformity, that it is all 
fair, that its flesh is sanctified, sacred, and life- 
giving. Human nature is heavenly, for it is the 
Slother of God; human nature is divine, for it is 
the Man-God. Emancipate, then, this captive 
God; let us, with His aid, free ourselves from the 
yoke of our senses, from the bonds of the wicked 
world, from sin and from satan. Let us rebel 
against this external yoke, and obey nothing but 
our heart, our divine heart, that we may reign 
with Him. Let us reign by the free and full ex- 
pansion of the whole life which He sends us, and 
of all its movements ; and this will be the kingdom 
of God upon earth. 

This is the inspiration of God, and the teaching 
of the generation of saints. This is what the gen- 
eration of the wicked has been forced to teach after 
its own manner, repeating it almost word for word, 
but reversing its meaning. It calls our fall a tri- 
umph ; our fall which every age can see, since evil 
and death are ours. It calls our deformities beauty 
— deformities so frightful, that without the super- 
natural aid of God, we cannot love one another. 
It sees vice, deformity, passion, corruption, con- 
cupiscence and pride, and calls them immaculate 
purity ; this is what it calls God ; but as for the 
true God-Man, it knows Him not; and as for the 
true Immaculate, the Mother of God, it will not 
hear of her. Thus does the generation of sinners 
imitate the generation of saints ; it uses nearly tho 
same words, it proclaims nearly the same hopes, 
but reverses everything. And yet, under this per- 



MEDITATION XII. 



75 



version we still recognize the idea which God gave 
us, the idea of the great dignity of mankind, and 
of the true worship of human nature. God, in- 
deed, would inspire this age with a greater love of 
mankind ; He would inspire it first with a growing 
worship of adoration and love for the human na- 
ture of the God-Man ; and then with a worship of 
veneration, of imitation, and of love for the pure 
human nature of the Immaculate Queen of the 
world and Mother of God; and, lastly, with a wor- 
ship of compassion, love, and self-sacrifice for that 
poor, sick, and miserable human nature, which the 
Man-God has deigned to call His own body and 
His own suffering members. 

Yes, I feel and I see that this is what God Him- 
self at this time is teaching every watchful mind, 
every heart that is not frozen. So that even they 
who will not hear the Church, who do not believe 
the Gospel, who know nothing about the Mother 
of God or the God-Man, even they may hear God 
whispering to them, and importuning them witnin. 
He speaks to their reason and their heart, and says 
to them : Son of man, look on the earth and behold 
the sufferings of men, as they lie in darkness and 
in death ; is this thy whole destiny, the destiny of 
mankind? dost thou not wish something better? 
dost thou not see how men sink down in endless 
degradation, from want of loving Me and each 
other? but thinkest thou that I love them not? 
thinkest thou that human nature, with all its mis- 
ery, has no beauty? Beauty of souls! So great is 
it, that one can and ought to love them even unto 
death, as I do ! Thy blood, son of man, thy heart, 
thy life, thy toil — wilt thou lend them to me for 



70 



MEDITATION XII. 



the service of mankind? Dost thou understand me? 
human nature can be raised up ; am not I within 
it? I am nearer to man than thou thinkest, for I 
am one with him. 

Thus it is that God seeks to inspire man with 
faith in the Man-God, and in His redemption; 
but the soul which is out of the Church, not know- 
ing how to interpret the secret inspiration of God 
by the light of revealed doctrine, is startled and 
dazzled by the closeness of God to man, and by 
the vivifying force which he breathes into him. 
And if thou, Queen of ages, dost not come to 
her aid, she will be led astray, she will confound 
God with man, and will fall in with the evil age 
instead of taking her side with Thy holy age. 

But the inspiration goes further, and says : No, 
all is not lost, son of man ! Raise thy head, take 
courage. If mankind obeys Me, it can do all. It 
can raise itself by means of My strength. It can 
do this, for it is free ; it can hear Me, conceive Me, 
bring Me down upon the earth ; and this it has 
done. When it is humble, pure and obedient, it 
is My Mother. " For whosoever shall do the will 
of my Father, that is in heaven, he is my brother, 
and sister, and mother" (Matt. xii. 50.) And 
my mother is the most perfect of all things that 
man can conceive, after Me. She is absolutely 
without stain. Be bold, then, son of this Mother ! 
Strive to be born in her bosom, for this birth is 
left to thy choice, and thou shalt become a brother 
of God, a son of God. 

Thus does God seek to inspire men with faith 
in the supernatural new birth, and in the immacu- 
late Mother of souls* who is the Mother of super- 



MEDITATION XII. 



77 



natural life, the sole channel of the new life, the 
life of God incarnate in our flesh. But man, out 
of the Church, not being able to elucidate the hid- 
den inspiration by the light of revealed doctrine, 
is dazzled by this divine fellowship, by this won- 
derful beauty of humanity, which revelation makes 
known: and if thou, Queen of ages, dost not 
guide him, he will go astray, he will pervert the 
meaning of the divine inspiration, and will fall a 
victim to the evil age. 

But the revelation continues : Truly, son of 
man, thou must be born again, for thou art full 
of misery, full of darkness, full of sin, subject to 
evil and to death. Thou must be changed; thou 
must know thine own blindness and misery ; thou 
must be born again, and become humble, pure, 
and chaste, and during thy whole life thou wilt 
have to go on fighting against those proud and 
sensual inclinations which keep thee at a distance 
from Me. 

This, then, is the crisis of the soul with regard 
to the interior inspiration of God. Here the soul 
must judge for herself, choose her path, and take 
her place either in the good or in the evil age. 
This is the moment for thee to come to her aid, 
Queen of ages. 

If thou dost not come to her assistance, if by 
reason of her natural habits and tendencies, her 
instincts or her will, she chooses not to copy thy 
virtues; if thy humility inspires her with con- 
tempt; if thy purity frightens her and makes her 
despair; if she will keep her pride, and attach 
herself to her pleasures, she is lost, and all the 



78 



MEDITATION XII. 



more certainly as she is the more ready to obey 
the inspiration of the world. 

Thus she upsets the twofold condition of hu- 
mility and purity, which God sets up ; she knows 
not, Queen of ages, that immaculate virginity 
alone is the Mother of God, and that no one can 
receive and know God and the God-Man but by 
thee, and she says: It is He who speaks to me, I 
know it; He tells me that He is near me, and in 
me, that human nature is beautiful, and that it 
can do all through Him. Therefore I am beauti- 
ful, I bear God within me, and I can do all things. 
And before long, intoxicated by this frightful 
dram, compounded of God's inspiration, and of 
its perversion by sin — sin, which the soul has re- 
solved to maintain to the last — stupefied by this 
horrible mixture, man says: I am God; we are 
gods. There is no such thing as evil. We are 
immaculate. Human nature is God; and that 
alone is to be adored. 

This is the spirit of those prophets of the evil 
age, who are now speaking to us; — a divine in- 
spiration in the midst of continued and resolute sin. 
All is lost, the life of grace wasted, the vessel bro- 
ken, because the man has refused to let himself be 
led to God by thee, immaculate Queen of ages, 
who alone approachest God by thine absolute 
purity. 

But, when thou assistest this soul, Queen of 
ages, then if she does not spurn thy humility; if 
humility, purity, and chastity, have no terrors for 
her; if from that time thou canst hold her by the 
hand, and teach her to listen and to obey like thee 
while God speaks, God becomes immediately her 



MEDITATION XII. 



79 



Lord; He works in her, He directs her; the soul 
no longer hesitates between darkness and light. 

The man sees what is darkness, and he sees 
what is light. He sees his own misery, his sin, 
and is seized with a holy hatred of it; he sees the 
splendor of the light which is offered to him, and 
is filled with a divine love for it. He ceases at 
once to call darkness light, according to the word 
of Isaias. He no longer says : ' ' There is no evil, 
no sin," or "Evil is only a smaller good." He 
no longer stifles his heart and his conscience that 
he may deny the existence of evil, nor does he lay 
aside his reason to be able to deny that there is 
such a thing as error. He no longer perverts the 
divine inspiration which teaches him that the 
Mother of life, the Mother of God and of souls, is 
altogether immaculate. He no longer concludes 
from this, in defiance of sense and reason, that 
mankind as a whole, such as it now is, is alto- 
gether immaculate. He sees evil within himself 
and outside of himself — the first condition for see- 
ing the true good. And then notwithstanding the 
terrible aspect of present evil and of earthly suffer- 
ings, he will be able to raise his mind by faith, 
by love, and by hope to know or to believe what 
God inspires within and what the Church of God 
proclaims without; that there is a new world, that 
there is a new human nature, that the heart of this 
new nature is divine and immaculate, and that all 
souls by their free-will, under the bright and lov- 
ing influence of this life-giving heart, may over- 
come evil and tend to its spotless purity, nay, even 
to its divinity. 

Then does man understand the meaning of the 



80 



MEDITATION XII. 



words, ' * Regeneration of the world, deliverance 
of the nations, progress of the people, increase of 
light, liberty, love, life, and peace among men?" 

The soul no longer deceives herself, she under- 
stands her holy inspirations as God gives them, 
and not as the spirit of evil perverts them, to the 
confusion and destruction of everything. 

Thou, then, Mother of our souls, art truly 
the Queen of the age, for the idea of thee is its 
pole-star. Thy star has taught the age to glorify 
human nature and prove it immaculate ; the eye 
sees this blessed star rise on the horizon but 
knows it not, though the Catholic Church cries 
aloud, Yes, the soft and brilliant light of this bless- 
ed star is truly the light of human nature, pure, 
virginal, and spotless, Mother of God, Queen of 
ages, and of this age. But because you see this 
light, deny not that darkness exists among men, 
but rather fathom the depth of the darkness, and 
labor to dissipate it by the light. 

Thou, then, holy Mother of God! art Queen 
of the present age, for thou art the star which 
guides it. Thou art the star which it needs to 
guide it to God, to comprehend Him, and to find 
Him in the thoughts which He inspires. 

Queen of ages ! pray fervently for this age ; 
suffer it not to deceive itself; put forth thy whole 
strength, the whole might of thy prayer. Queen 
— may I disclose thy mystery? Thou pray est a 
double prayer; Thou art the ladder of Jacob, by 
which angels ascend and descend from earth to 
heaven, and from heaven to earth. This is the 
image of thy prayer. Thou pray est God to come 



MEDITATION XIII. 



81 



down from heaven, thou beseechest men to rise. 
Thou prayest thy Son to knock at the door of our 
hearts, and thou prayest our hearts to open to 
Him ; wonderful prayer of this tender, this spot- 
less Mother! my son, she says, obey thy God, 
my son, refuse not thy God. Give our souls 
no rest, most holy Mother, thy prayer is all-power- 
ful with God, it is only too often powerless with 
us. But God gives thee at this season a more 
piercing and a louder voice; cease not then, draw 
this whole age to God ; persuade it to give itself 
up to God. God would make mankind purer, 
freer, fairer, more lovely and more loving, let not 
this inspiration split the one age into two, into two 
jarring and contradictory ages, one destroying 
what the other would build, — let there be no evil 
age, let there only remain a holy age, or at least 
let the wicked age be weakened ; let all upright* 
hearts forsake it, let no power be given to it to 
seduce so many souls created for the light ; let the 
wicked be its only followers, let numbers, courage, 
and enthusiasm, be found in the holy age, and let 
there be nothing to stifle the thoughts which God 
inspires for the progress of His kingdom upon earth. 



MEDITATION XIIL 

Queen of the age, pray for us ! 

Queen of the age, help us to go deeper into 
this fundamental idea ! 

Queen of the age, pray for the progress of 
God's kingdom upon earth ! 



82 



MEDITATION XIII. 



" Our earth hath yielded its fruit," and its fruit, 
as the Church tells us, is the Incarnate Word. 
This earth, which brought forth thorns and thistles, 
has brought forth the most divine fruit which God 
could possibly create, the mature, the all-perfect, 
the heavenly and eternal fruit of infinite worth — 
the God-man. Pray, then, holy Mother of 
God, for this earth which has yielded its fruit. 

Pray that God's kingdom may come, and His 
will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

Is not this the special inspiration of God to the 
present age ? 

The evil age itself, Queen of the holy age ! 
is forced to recognize in its own fashion God's in- 
spiration, and cries out more loudly than we, 4 4 Yes, 
let good reign on earth, let the earth become 
heaven:" but it adds, "Let there be no other 
heaven than this earth." Thus instead of raising 
earth towards heaven, it blots heaven out, and 
leaves earth hopeless to its darkness and its curse, 
and to the power of death and sin. But the 
Church of God, regenerated man, the holy age, 
of which thou art Queen, Mother of God — the 
Church which receives without mutilation the in- 
spiration of God, points first to heaven, the world 
to come, the only world where there shall be no 
evil nor death, and where life, light, and love shall 
be changeless for eternity. And next, she tells 
men that if they will be humble and pure, if they 
will love God and one another, if they will unite 
their heart, their mind, and their life to the God- 
Man, by their conformity to the holy Mother of G od, 
through whom God is born in the soul, they shall 
enter this eternal world; and, moreover, shall 



MEDITATION XIII. 



draw down a blessing on the present world, and 
shall flood it with light and with grace, that shall 
make salvation easier for future ages 

But, further, does not the Catholic Church seem 
to have some great and special hope for the present 
time ? Does it not expect soon to see some striking 
progress of God's kingdom on earth ? Not that our 
great and patient Church is one to share the blind 
hurry and childish hope of those proud and sickly 
minds that think they can reform the world the 
moment it will listen to them. She is not one to 
accept as a prophecy the words of the holy man 
who said that , 1 ' When the mystery of the Immacu- 
late Conception is defined by the Church as a doc- 
trine of faith, when the light of this capital truth 
bursts forth in its magnificence, then shall the re- 
pose and peace of the world be assured. But till 
that time we must pray and suffer, and consent to 
see the world remain in its present confusion. " 
The Church, though it honors this great man, does 
not propose his words or his hope either to our 
faith or to our pious belief. 

But, on the other hand, are we forbidden to be- 
lieve that the world will, some day, be delivered 
from its present confusion ? that man will order the 
earth in justice and equity ? that he will rule it in 
peace ? that the progress of Christian wisdom will 
bring to pass this other progress in the world? and 
that the progress of wisdom will consist in a deeper 
humility and a greater purity of soul; that is, in a 
larger capacity for receiving God, and for welcom- 
ing His birth in our minds and in our hearts? In 
other words, this progress would consist in a more 
enlightened, more loving, more true worship of 



84 



MEDITATION XIII. 



imitation and of veneration for the holy Mother of 
God. And why should not this progress of Chris- 
tian wisdom be helped on, when men come to un- 
derstand it, by the great act of the Church defining 
as a dogma of faith the incomparable grandeur and 
the absolute purity of the holy Mother of God, the 
Mother of regenerated mankind? That the knowl- 
edge of the Mother of God should have become 
clearer, that the worship now paid her should be 
more profound in spirit and truth, must surely be 
a sign of the present will of God. Do we not see 
that God wishes at this very time to draw us again 
more closely to His divine Mother, that He may 
more freely communicate Himself to men by means 
of her, who everywhere and forever gives Him to 
the world? 

Yes, the Catholic Church, represented by its 
visible head, around whom all the successors of the 
apostles congregate as one man, the Church at the 
present moment seems full of this hope. And who 
would dare to reproach her for this, my God ? 
if there was more love for the visible representa- 
tive of our Lord Jesus Christ, if there was a firmer 
belief in the Gospel and in those words of our Mas- 
ter: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 

build my Church and I will give to thee 

the keys of the kingdom of heaven;" if men were 
animated and enlighted by these sentiments, would 
they not look with greater respect towards this man 
whom Jesus Christ has placed in the centre of the 
world, in the centre of regenerated mankind? 
Would they fail to meditate on the measures he 
takes, on the words which he addresses to the 
Church, as her teacher and her head? Would they 



MEDITATION XIII. 



85 



not discover therein the present will of God, and 
the meaning of the movements which He is im- 
pressing upon the world ? The Gospel says well that 
Caiphas prophesied because he was the high priest. 
How should it not be so with him who is the high 
priest of the new covenant, and who worships the 
divine King whom Caiphas crucified? 

Thus we see the Vicar of J esus Christ with his 
eyes fixed upon the whole Catholic world, (univer- 
sum Catholicum contemplantes orbem,) like our 
Saviour in the Gospel, when "He saw men dis- 
tressed and lying like sheep that have no shepherd." 
Thus we see him, like his Master whom he repre- 
sents, uttering the profound grief which overwhelms 
him at the sight of the sufferings of the world, of 
the wars, of the civil discords, of the pests of the 
earth and of the air, which destroy men and over- 
throw cities. At this sight he raises his eyes to 
heaven, prays, and commands all men to pray and 
to supplicate without ceasing, (orare et obsecrare 
non desistinus,) and to ask God to put an end to 
all the wars in the whole world, to appease all di- 
visions between the chiefs of the nations, to give 
peace, repose and concord to Christian people, and 
to deliver them from all the ills which oppress them, 
and to bestow true prosperity upon them. These 
words are taken from the oecumenical letter which 
the visible representative of our Lord addresses to 
the world to exhort souls to a change of life, to 
penance, to pardon, and to good works, and to call 
upon man "to rejoice in hope." 

Soon after the Sovereign Pontiff had pronounced 
these words, the consecration of the new basilica of 
St. Paul gave him occasion to repeat and exem- 



$6 MEDITATION XIII. 

plify them. He said : " That which we desire above 
all things in this solemnity, venerable brethren and 
dear children, is that all of you, with ourselves, in 
this most critical period for the Church and for 
Christian people, should not cease to implore with 
firm confidence the assistance of the great Apostle, 
that his prayers may obtain from God peace and 
repose both for the Church and for civil society ; 
that evil may be vanquished ; that all people may 
live in friendship in the unity of one faith ; that all 
men may know our Lord J esus Christ ; that all may 
be penetrated with the same love ; that all may ever 
work and meditate on all truth, all justice, all sanc- 
tity ; that they may walk before God, always worthy 
of His sight, always filled with the fruit of good 
works, and that they may become heirs of eternal 
life." 

When it pleased the Saviour to choose in these 
critical times, for His visible representative this 
man of love, whose love is so little understood, all 
people blessed the first movements of his generous 
heart, which was inspired with the Spirit of his 
Master. From the first moment of his providen- 
tial mission, he wished for a progress of God's 
kingdom upon earth ; he sought to work out, in 
the humble patrimony which he had to govern, the 
experiment or rather the example of what he wished 
to give to the world: order, peace, and union in 
justice and truth. But his own understood him not. 
They first of all rent his garment, some trying to 
push him backwards, and others to cast him head- 
long over the precipice. Then they would have 
stoned him ; but, like the Saviour, he passed through 
the midst of them, for his hour was not yet come. 



MEDITATION XIII. 



Seeing then, that he could not accomplish for one 
city (Urbi) the trial of his healing mission, he 
raised his eyes to heaven, and fixing them on the 
star of the ages and of saints, besought God to act 
for Himself, and to accomplish for the whole world 
(Orbi) the great blessing which He had for the 
moment refused to grant to the infatuated city. 
Then, still persevering in his prayer, and knowing 
well that God is always dispensing His gifts and 
bestowing His blessings, he turned to the Mother 
of mankind, and conjured her to teach the world 
how to listen, to accept and to obey. Then assur- 
edly did God reply to His vicegerent on earth. 
The world must be ever more and more closely at- 
tached to the Mother of the God-Man, and thus 
shall His kingdom advance on the earth. And 
this is what has just been accomplished. 

And with what prayers and hopes does the holy 
Pontiff conclude the apostolic letter in which he de- 
fines and proclaims the dogma of the Immaculate 
Conception ! These are the remarkable words in 
which our common Father solemnly declares the 
constant hope of his heart. " Yes, we have the sure 
hope, the full confidence that the ever blessed Vir- 
gin will obtain for us, by her powerful intercession, 
that the holy Church, our Mother, may triumph 
over all obstacles, and vanquish all error, and may 
be increased and developed in all places and all 
nations; that she may reign from one ocean to the 
other, and to the very extremities of the world ; 
that she may reign in peace, calmness and liberty; 
that she may reign for the pardon of the guilty and 
the healing of the sick; that every weary heajt 
may find strength, every afflicted heart consolation, 



88 



MEDITATION XIII. 



and every laden heart its defence, and that all men 
may come forth from the darkness in which they 
had lost themselves, and may return to the way of 
justice and truth, so that there should be but one 
flock and one shepherd." 

These are the hopes of the Catholic Church and 
of her visible head, the Vicar of Christ, with re- 
gard to the present age. 

Animated by the same hopes, and following in 
the track of the Vicar of Christ, the present Arch- 
bishop of Paris, in his Lenten Pastoral for 1859, 
says : ' ' Lift up your eyes ! Consider the harvest of 
souls See what glorious and holy under- 
takings are possible in these days, not only imme- 
diately around us, but far off, throughout the vast 
extent of the world which seems to have entered on 
a decisive crisis, either for its rise or fall. Nations 
are brought together, the East and the West are 
united. God seems to be raising the veil of the 
future and showing us great things in store for 

mankind ! Let us join unanimously in the 

work of God, for the salvation of souls, and by this 
union of hearts and minds, wonderful changes will 

soon take place in the world ! Then the 

Church will cease to moan, will open her heart to 
the livliest hopes, and witness a wonderful advance 
in the propagation of the Gospel and in the happi- 
ness of mankind. Then many mountains of diffi- 
culties will be made smooth, many chasms will be 
filled up, and men of expectation and desire will 
have a glimpse of the realization of the kingdom 
of God upon the earth." 

Thanks be to God that such are the hopes of 
our pastors in the present day! 



MEDITATION XIII. 



89 



And why not hope ? Why always refuse to be- 
lieve in great things and in great novelties? 
God, let not the world fall back into the state of 
those souls who have given up the idea of progress, 
and who say: I remain where I am. If nothing 
is more abominable to Thee in one single soul, 
wilt Thou endure it in the mass of mankind? No, 
Lord. Thou hast commanded us to repeat con- 
tinually: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on 
earth, as it is in heaven." Give us the undying 
hope and the undying will to fulfill, under Thine 
inspiration and Thy guidance, the promises of this 
holy prayer. Grant that when we are more united 
to this heavenly heart of human nature, to this 
source of life, by which Thou didst enter into the 
world to give life to the world, we may then make 
use of Thy strength, Thy inspirations, and Thy 
gifts to do also the things that Thou hast done, 
Lord, and greater things still, according to Thy 
promise. And does it not really seem, Lord, that 
Thou speakest in a voice both clear and strong to 
this age, and dost Thou not say to it, as formerly 
to Thine apostles: u Behold, I say to you, lift up 
your eyes and see the countries, for they are white 
already to harvest?" Jesus, is not this one of 
those manifestly divine words, which every mind 
and every heart is forced to hear in these days? 
Does not this wonderful word form part of the pro- 
vidential inspiration which is given now to the 
world, and perverted by the evil age, whilst the 
good age meditates upon it and developes the di- 
vine seed which it contains? 

* ' Others have labored," again says the Saviour, 
* 1 and ye have entered into their labors." The apos- 



GO 



MEDITATION XIIT. 



ties gathered what the prophets had sown ; but the 
apostles also sowed, and the Church has already 
gathered many times rich harvests of saints. And 
how is it we cannot see that we are on the eve of 
a harvest which will perhaps be the fairest of all. 

For eighteen hundred years the earth has been 
sown with the divine seed ; a seed which is never 
exhausted, but constantly puts forth fresh roots, 
and whose vigor is renewed by each recurring har- 
vest. Now, more than ever, is the divine seed 
sown throughout the whole world. In the central 
portion of the globe, among Christian nations, it 
has already worked a great wonder. It nourishes 
and strengthens men with a divine food, and makes 
them rulers of the world. The ancient royal race 
of the earth was destroyed by barbarians, who were 
stronger than they. The new royal race has no 
barbarians to fear ; all that does not belong to this 
race is hopelessly disabled. Christian nations uni- 
ted together can dispose of the whole world as they 
please. For governing and regenerating the world, 
they have sciences, arts, discoveries, and all sorts 
of instruments which were unknown to former ages. 
These are the fruits of that strength of mind and 
will which the divine food imparts to them. The 
harvest then is manifestly ripe, and it is also a 
great harvest, for the whole world is the field 
which has to be reaped in these our times. 

Lord Jesus! what is it, then, that is wanting 
for the beginning of such a splendid harvest? It 
is union. And Thou, Lord, didst pray for union, 
" That they may be one, as we are one!" It was 
Thy last prayer ; and in these days Thou art mani- 
festing Thy desire to fulfill it. Thou art bringing 



MEDITATION XIII. 



01 



us nearer to the heart of souls, to the heart of hu- 
man nature, that heart which is made up of two 
hearts, as the human heart also ought to be : the 
heart which is the God-Man. and the Mother of 
the God-Man. Thou wouldst have us all united in 
this centre, around the visible Head of Thy Church. 

Ah ! if we would agree to a little more humility, 
a little more purity, our union would soon be blessed 
and confirmed. No doubt there will always be 
wicked and worthless hearts, incapable of loving ; 
there will always be perverted minds that are ene- 
mies to the truth. But, under the all-powerful in- 
spiration of God, the time may come for all active, 
influential souls, for those souls that think, that 
speak and direct, to find themselves in an over- 
whelming majority for Christian objects. Is it not 
evident that at such a time the thought of Christian 
unity, fortified by the wonderful appliances which 
add a hundred-fold to its strength, and which trans- 
port men with the quickness of light, will encircle 
the whole world as with a net? Then shall the 
sheaves be brought to thy feet, Queen of the 
age, Mother of regenerated mankind. 

my Queen, pray God to give me the grace to 
become one of thy reapers. The harvest is great, 
and the laborers few. But how can men, with their 
eyes open, stand idle ? For my part, Mother of 
the age, I offer thee all my strength and the labor 
of my whole life. Long enough have I wasted my 
days in barren toils which will not save one soul, 
which will not dry up one tear, and will not secure 
for miserable men one single ear of the harvest. 
Now, I know the object and the end of the work. 



92 



MEDITATION XIV. 



My heart shall find its joy in this labor; happy 
shall I be if with Jesus I can say, when called to 
the tribunal of God: "Lord, I have finished the 
work which Thou hast given me to do." 



MEDITATION XIV. 

Queen of doctors, pray for us ! 

Queen of doctors, pray for us, and as we desire 
to serve God in spirit and in truth, and also to honor 
thee in our minds and in our hearts, obtain for 
those amongst us whose understanding is open to 
the light, the happiness of sharing some of those 
sublime ideas which led Thy holy doctors in all 
ages to maintain with zeal the dogma of Thine 
Immaculate Conception. 

If we ask what God is, these doctors tell us He 
is that being than whom nothing greater can be 
conceived. So that, to form some idea of God, 
there is a way as simple as it is sure — to heap to- 
gether in our thought the idea of every possible 
perfection, raised to the highest conceivable degree. 
We may give the reins to our heart, our reason, 
and our fancy, but we shall never rise high enough 
— and when we have thought of the most perfect, 
the most wonderful, the most lovely, the most 
adorable being that we can conceive, let us still say, 
this is nothing — God is infinitely more perfect than 
anything we can conceive. This is the teaching 
of all Christian doctors and all philosophers, and 
their arguments on this head are as certain and as 
solid as the infallible proofa of geometry. 



MEDITATION XIV 



93 



In the same way, the doctors tell us there is a 
created being, the image of God, whose perfection 
may in some sense be always growing till it is 
bounded by nothing short of infinity ; and this crea- 
ture, the pure image of God, possesses a purity than 
which no greater can be conceived except God's. 

This is St. Anselm's' idea — he it was who said, 
God is the being than whom nothing more perfect 
can be conceived. He it is who says of the holy 
Mother of God: She is the creature than whom 
nothing more pure can be conceived except God.* 

And St. Thomas, the greatest of philosophers 
and of theologians, thus unfolds St. Anselm's idea : 
Purity, he says, is the absence of all spot; hence 
it is possible that a creature may exist than whom 
it is impossible to conceive anything purer amongst 
creatures ; it is enough that this being should not 
have a single spot, and that no sin should ever have 
stained her. Such is the purity of the Blessed Vir- 
gin, who was free from all sin, actual or original. 
Only her purity is not equal to God's, because she 
had the power of sinning, which God could never 
have. But if we speak of the goodness of a crea- 
ture, adds St. Thomas, since goodness is measured 
by its approximation to the sovereign Good, which 
is infinite, it follows that a goodness greater than 
any created goodness is always possible. 

St. Thomas, we see, here teaches the whole truth 
and resolves the whole doubt. Only in his answer 
he says something which, ill-understood, may shock 
the ears of Christians. He seems to say that the 
Virgin has all conceivable purity, but not all pos- 

* major sub Deo nullatenus intelligitur. — Bull of Pius IX. 



94 



MEDITATION XIV. 



sible goodness. But he only means that her per- 
fection may be ever growing without ever equaling 
God's, and that her brightness is not that infinite 
light or infinite glory which is God. The Queen 
of heaven, clothed wi'th the sun, clothed with Him 
who is the only well-spring of the brightness, the 
light and the love of saints, shines like the sun, as 
our Saviour said that the saints shall shine like the 
stars. But, does the sun itself fill infinite space 
with its light? Surely not. There was a time when 
its rays did not even reach the earth ; they soon 
traversed millions and millions of times this dis- 
tance ; but still they have a limit. This limit may 
recede with the rapidity of lightning, or almost of 
thought, but a limit it will ever remain. The sphere 
of the sun's radiance is ever increasing with majes- 
tic strides, but it must ever have its measure and 
its bounds. So it is with the brightness of the 
saints and the glory, or as St. Thomas calls it, the 
goodness of the Blessed Virgin. 

And besides, in another place, St. Thomas con- 
fesses that God could not have created anything 
more holy than the Blessed Virgin and the human- 
ity of Jesus Christ. ' ' The humanity of Jesus 
Christ," says he, "as being one with God — and 
the Virgin as being the Mother of God — have a 
sort of infinite dignity imparted to them by the in- 
finite Goodness, which is God ; in this sense nothing 
better can be created, for there is nothing which 
is better than God." (1. q. xxvi. art. 6 ad 4 ) 
From this we may understand in what sense the 
doctors of the Church affirm that there is one crea- 
ture in existence than whom nothing more perfect, 
nothing more pure can be conceived. 



MEDITATION XIV. 



95 



In this sense, then, according to them, there ex- 
ists in the centre of creation the highest degree of 
beauty and perfection with which it was possible 
for God to endow finite beings. Let us not say- 
that God might have created a better world, but 
that He did not so will, without at the same time 
laying down the necessary restrictions of the an- 
gelic doctor. Let us rather say that He might 
have created one less beautiful, but that He did not 
so will. He might first of all have left man to his 
own nature, and not have raised him by grace to 
a participation of the divine nature. He might not 
have pre-ordained the birth of a daughter of Adam 
who, though of the human race, should yet be with- 
out spot. It would have been changing the plan 
of the universe, I know, but this plan might have 
been changed ; in this case there would not have 
existed any mere creature than whom it would be 
impossible to conceive one more pure. But this 
was not the will of God. He chose that His work 
should have this seal of perfection, that the human 
understan^ng and the human heart should not 
seek in vain anywhere short of God for the purest 
of all possible beauty. 

This is why these doctors uphold with so much 
zeal the opinion that there exists one creature with- 
out spot, and that the Queen of the universe, the 
Mother of God, who is necessarily, of all the works 
of God,, the most perfect after the humanity of Je- 
sus Christ, is also the perfection of beauty without 
any spot or fault. That she is pure and spotless in 
her life, pure and spotless in her heart, wherein 
concupiscence never dared to raise its head; that 
she is pure and spotless in her birth and in her con- 



96 



MEDITATION XIT. 



ception. Without this doctrine, it would seem 
that the last link of the golden chain which is to 
reunite all creation to the throne of God and to 
the incarnate Word would be wanting. 

It is good for me, my God, that my soul should 
dwell on these ideas of perfection, that it shculd 
believe firmly and constantly that all excellence and 
all beauty exist in Thee in an infinite degree, and 
further, that in Thy creation, and in this our hu- 
man nature, there exists a higher degree of beauty 
and excellence than it is possible for us to conceive . * 
When we think of Thee we must add infinity to 
our conceptions. When we think of Thine immacu- 
late image we must not add infinity to it, but we 
must enlarge our ideas to the utmost, and be con- 
vinced that it is far more beautiful than we can 
imagine. my God, since the world is so beau- 
tiful I will be no longer sad. I will correct in my- 
self this want of admiration, of veneration, and of 
enthusiasm, which is one of the greatest deformi- 
ties of the carnal man. I will wean myself and 
others, as far as I can, from this fatal §nd detesta- 
ble habit of the so-called prudent and experienced, 
which consists in stifling all lofty aspirations, and 
trusting only to groveling thoughts. Low thoughts, 
I know, correspond for our short day with the con- 
temptible realities which surround us, but high 
thoughts correspond to the holy realities of heaven 
and of God, and of His immaculate and well-be- 
loved creature, our Mother and our Hope, the hea- 

* . . . . " Tola pulchra et perfecta earn innocentiae et sanc- 

titatis plenitudinem prae se ferret, qua major sub Deo nulJate- 
nus intelligitur, et quam praeter Deum nemo assequi cogitacdo 
potest." — Apostolical Letters of Pius IX. 



MEDITATION XV. 



97 



verily centre which attracts all the warmth, all the 
force, and all the glory of the soul to restore them 
to God from whom they come. 



MEDITATION XV. 

Mother, most admirable, pray for us ! 

Mother most admirable, whose beauty we have 
come to understand by meditating on the Holy 
Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers and 
Doctors of the Church; Virgin, whom we have 
found inferior to none but God, pray for us; pray 
for the whole Church, that in these times, and that 
soon, thy power may shine forth in some brilliant 
manifestation ! 

And in what does the power of thy surpassing 
beauty principally consist, if it is not in destroying 
all heresies, that is, in conquering that principle of 
apostasy and pride, which divides men and retards 
the period of their union amongst themselves and 
with God by means of light and love? 

And what ray of light and love can dry up the 
intellectual source of heresy, if not the clear ex- 
position of the mystery of the Immaculate Mother 
of God? 

The mystery of the Mother of God carrying 
her Son, either in her bosom or in her arms, is 
manifestly the focus of truth, the centre of all 
questions between God and man, and the point of 
contact between God and the world. 

The mystery of the connection between God and 
the world, which is the perpetual meditation of 



98 



MEDITATION XV* 



every mind which rouses itself from the general 
slumber, has been at all times the spring of the 
most contradictory errors and heresies. Now the 
mystery of the Immaculate Mother of God, car- 
rying her Son either in her womb or in her arms, 
contains the answer to them all. 

Let us, therefore, meditate on what the Catholic 
Church, the depository of all truth, offers to our 
veneration and our contemplation. This is — the 
God-Man, the Son of God, conceived by the Holy 
Ghost ; the God-Man as an infant, the God-man 
borne in the arms of His ever-immaculate creature, 
notwithstanding the fall of the first man ; the God- 
Man borne in the arms of His mother, of a Mother 
who merited to be the Mother of God, of a Mother 
whose soul and body were worthy to bear God ; the 
God-Man as a child, thus borne in the arms of His 
Mother, in the midst of a fallen world, to save it, 
and to uplift the creature to its eternal and un- 
changeable perfection. 

Yes, all heresies are overcome by the light of 
this central dogma, by this fullness of truth, by this 
true Sun from whose rays no error can be hidden. 

Jesus, God and man, send forth Thy light and 
dissipate the frightful darkness of those minds that 
have lost sight of God, that see nothing beyond 
man alone, and that say there is neither soul nor 
God in the world. Thou who art truly God and 
truly man, God clothed with humanity, with a 
human soul and a human body, enlighten these 
blind eyes that they may see behind the forms of 
body the free and spiritual soul, and behind Thy 
clothing of body and of soul afford them a glimpse 
of the infinite glory of Thy Godheads 



m KDtTATION xv. 



99 



Jesus, true God and true man, send another 
ray and dissipate the frightful darkness of those 
minds that have lost sight of God, that call this 
body and this human soul which they see divine, 
that call everything God. Show them Thy hu- 
manity, which is infinitely distinct from Thy di- 
vinity, and subject to infirmity and to death ; show 
them Thy growth, which is that of human nature, 
and not of the eternal and immutable Divinity, 
which cannot grow. Show them, outside of 
Thyself, the fallen world which has to be saved, 
this limited, transitory, and imperfect world, which 
has to be brought to perfection and to eternal life. 

Jesus, true God and true man, who unitest 
in Thy person two natures infinitely distinct, send 
again a ray and dissipate the frightful darkness of 
those minds which are fully persuaded that the 
world is not God, and that this world has been 
created by God, and yet believe not in any further 
connection of God with the world, and which see 
this world as it were separated by infinity and eter- 
nity from the infinite God. Show them, Jesus, 
the creature and the Creator united in the unity of 
Thy divine Person ; show them that we not only 
breathe, live, and have our being in God; that 
God not only upholds each atom of creation by His 
Word and by His power ; that God not only sus- 
tains every thing that has being, vivifies all that 
lives, acts in each movement, works in each action, 
and governs by His Providence the whole universe, 
nay, each atom of the universe with the same care 
as the whole ; but show them also that this natural 
presence of God, whereby He is present in all parts 
of His work by His essence and His power, is 



100 



MEDITATION XV. 



nothing in comparison to the supernatural union 
of God with the soul by His divine grace, which 
itself is but a small thing compared to the substan- 
tial, absolute, hypostatic union between the divme 
and human nature in the person of the Word. 
Show them Thy love, my God, Son of God and 
Son of man, which surpasses, in the supernatural 
power of Thine embrace, all possible union between 
created beings, and that of all the ties of blood; 
that of the husband and wife, of the son and mother, 
that of souls united in love, and that of the soul 
with its own body. Show them, God, whether it 
be true that Thou art a God without love, a God 
separated from the world. Show them Thy divinity 
united to Thy humanity. Show them, OWord In- 
carnate, who wast borne by thy Immaculate crea- 
ture, show them the Mother who carries Thee, 
walking in this valley of tears and holding God in 
her arms. 

Jesus, divine Infant, borne by Thy Mother, 
send another ray and dissipate the sad darkness in 
which those minds are buried who are without 
hope ! Look on the poor infidels ! Look on those 
Christians who are asleep ! Show them the Word 
Incarnate, as an Infant in the arms of His Mother, 
and growing up unto the perfect man. Show them 
that therein is found the whole meaning of the his- 
tory of mankind, and the whole meaning of the 
history of each soul, the whole plan of God's work, 
whether in the individual soul or in all mankind. 
Banish the spirits of darkness, and the dim fancies 
which make them see the work of God as if it 
were stricken with barrenness and inaction, in mis- 
ery and evu\ and which give them . up in their de- 



MEDITATION XV. 



101 



spair to indolence, to the present enjoyment, and to 
the deadly torpidity of the senses. Thy work is holy, 
my God ! This world even, our temporary abode, 
is holy, it is thy footstool, for it is the pedestal of 
of the divine Mother who bears Thee in her arms. 

Remedy the utterly desperate case of those of 
whom Isaias speaks, 4 'who shall not have the 
morning light, who shall pass through the light 
without knowing it, who shall curse their King and 
their God, and shall look upwards; and they shall 
look to the earth and behold trouble and darkness, 
weakness and distress;" remedy also the less desr 
per ate case of those who do not pray that Thy will 
may be done on earth as it is in heaven, who do 
not seek it on earth, and still less expect it in 
heaven ; who know not that there is a divine progress 
on the earth, a plan of salvation for all people, a di- 
vine progress in the world and in each soul, a growth 
of the Man-God, in the midst of His creation, till 
it shall grow up unto the perfect man. 

Yes, Infant Jesus, Thou God-Man, who didst 
increase in grace and in wisdom before God and 
before men, till Thou hadst grown up unto the per- 
fect man, in this human nature which has been 
saved and exalted by Thee, give unto men the hope 
of seeing God born in them, growing in them, 
purifying them, glorifying them. Give them the 
hope of one day seeing the new heaven and the 
new earth in which justice shall dwell, and of 
which Thou wilt be the life, the light, and the hap- 
piness. Give them the hope of seeing the will of 
God accomplished on earth as it is heaven, by Thy 
increase throughout the whole human race, before 
Qod and before men. 



102 



MEDITATION XV. 



Jesus, who art carried iu the arms of Thine 
immaculate creature, send forth another ray to dis- 
perse the horrible darkness wherein those sombre 
seekers into the secrets of evil are plunged, and 
are still plunging, who contemplate the night, 
either because they love darkness and evil, or be- 
cause they fear them and believe them to be greater 
than, or at least equal to, Thee. They think they 
see that good and evil share the world like night 
and day, they attribute to evil a majesty which it 
has not, and worship the principle of darkness as 
much as, or more than, the principle of light. 
Others, without believing that Thy enemy is 
stronger than Thou, think that all beings are bad 
from the roots, and that the principle of life is 
changed into the poison of hell. They think that 
God was conquered for a time by sin, that His 
whole work fell from His Hands, and that it is only 
by an immense effort that He has been able to col- 
lect together its fragments once more. There are, 
even among people calling themselves Christians, 
those who magnify the power of evil ; attributing 
to it, in spite of the Church, a majesty which it 
has not, and who suppose that it entered into every- 
thing, even for an instant into the Mother of God, 
so that there remained not for mankind one spark, 
one germ of supernatural life. They think that 
evil has been permitted to destroy in the soul all 
trace of freedom and of reason ; that our will is 
completely enslaved and can work nothing but 
evil, that our intelligence is completely enfeebled, 
and sees nothing but error, and that there remains 
nothing in the soul of the children of Adam which 
is not irrevocably cursed, These terrorists of re- 



MEDITATION XV. 



103 



ligion attribute to God a fatal predestination, and 
an everlasting and arbitrary will to deceive and 
bring to perdition the multitude of souls. Ac- 
cording to them man can neither see nor act, and 
this slave who can do nothing, this dupe who can 
see nothing, it is God's pleasure to lead to perdi- 
tion, and to give up the poor victim of evil to the 
eternal torments for which he was created. 

Jesus ! from Thy throne in the arms of Thine 
Immaculate Mother, show them how Thou hast 
from all eternity saved from evil this Mother of 
all men, this principle of regenerated mankind, 
how evil was never permitted to reach Thy heaven, 
the very crown and core of Thy creation. In this 
paradise of the new Adam, in this august and di- 
vine world of God, Thy will has always been 
done; and the two royal Souls, Thine own and 
that of Thy Mother, the souls of the bridegroom 
and the spouse, of whom all the elect were to be 
born, have ever had their foot on the head of the 
serpent. Thine Immaculate Mother, trampling 
evil under foot and bearing her Divine Son in her 
arms, has ever been the eternal idea and the fixed 
centre of Thy creation; Thou didst call the dark- 
ness 6 1 outer," and it has ever been external to 
Thy Mother, 

Finally, most Holy Virgin ! who bearest thy 
divine Son, send forth thy light to overcome those 
great heresies which still bear sway among so many 
nations, which protest even in these days against 
the Church and against thee. Enlighten, Jesus ! 
those who have no feeling of unity, who believe 
Thy Church to be divisible and capable of living, 
like the sections of a worm, after it is cut up. 



104 



MEDITATION XV. 



Enlighten those who know not tradition. En- 
lighten those who believe not in the continual 
presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church. En- 
lighten those who believe not in Thy reign on the 
earth, and who attribute Thy power to temporal 
sceptres; those who know not the excellence of 
virginity, and still less of humility, and who at- 
tribute to each member the continual inspiration of 
the Spirit, which is promised to the entire body ; 
those who will have no other expiatory sufferings 
than those which Thou hast suffered, and who un- 
derstand not with St. Paul that they should them- 
selves fill up those things that are wanting of Thy 
sufferings ; those who believe not in the merit of 
man's labor, in the merits of his free will, and of 
his works, and who ignore all the human side of 
the redemption. Lef all such look on thee, di- 
vine Mother, thou who hast merited to be the 
Mother of God, and by whom we have merited to 
receive within us the source of life ;* let them look 
on the God-Man, who came into the world through 
thee, by thy consent; let them contemplate thee 
at the foot of the cross, uniting thyself to the sac- 
rifice, and offering up the Flesh of thy flesh and 
the Blood of thy blood ; may they understand thy 
perfect and profound personal sacrifice of a spot- 
less virginity and boundless humility, both neces- 
sary for the conception of -God ; may they look 
upon Thee, Mother of the whole Church, in 
whom all the living members of the Church, have 
but one heart and one soul — thy heart and soul, 
Mother of God, united to the heart and soul of 



1 Per quam meruimus Auctorem vita suscipere. 



MEDITATION XV. 



105 



Jesus; may they look up to thee who alone didst 
conceive by the Holy Ghost, to whom alone His 
grace is given, and to those who are joined to thee, 
as the grain of wheat to the ear ; may they look 
towards thee, Queen of the world, whose Son 
sustains the world on His sceptre, which is the 
cross ; and may they understand that thou art also 
the Mother most admirable, the focus of truth, 
and the necessary link of unity. 

Such, Mary is the greatness of thy power. 
By thy immaculate purity, and by thy divine Son 
whom thou wast worthy to bear, thou dost alone 
exterminate all heresies throughout the world, 
from the great and primitive heresy against which 
thou didst defend the heart of human nature — the 
heart of God's work, to all those heresies which 
have sprung from it, and which labor to divide the 
Church, All heresy springs partly from pride of 
heart, partly from an insufficiency or exaggeration 
of thought. The mind exaggerates one side of 
the truth, and so destroys the other. Thou then, 
who art not only humility itself, but also through 
the divine Son in thine arms, the focus, the centre, 
the union of all truth, how shouldst thou not be 
the glorious destroyer of all heresies? Those who 
see nothing but God in the creature, and those who 
see no God therein ; those who see no evil in it, 
and those who see nothing but evil, those who 
adore evil, and attribute it to God, those who deny 
it, and those who fear it more than they fear God; 
those who see nothing but man, and those who 
place the wicked in the kingdom of God; those 
who deliver to eternal flames nearly the whole of 
the human race ; those who would have sin which 



106 



MEDITATION XV. 



is not personal expiated in eternal torments, and 
who are called in theology tortores infantium ; 
those who deny the necessity of Christian warfare 
and sacrifice, and of the cross; those who see 
nothing higher than human nature, and those who 
think it essentially accursed, all these have only 
to look on thee, Mother of God, and His im- 
maculate master-piece, crushing the head of the 
serpent, and carrying in thy arms the God-Man, 
the divine Infant, who holds in one hand the world 
surmounted by a cross. God, man, and the world 
and their relations; liberty, sin and its limits: 
the supernatural union of God and the world; the 
victory over evil, the conflict, the sacrifice, the 
labor, the cross, the salvation of the world; all 
this is seen in thy image, Mother most admirable, 
who bearest thy Son in thine arms, and in Him 
possesses the assemblage of all truths. 

Let this be thy petition, Mother most admi- 
rable, that Jesus may grow in thy arms, and that 
the ever increasing manifestation of thy mysteries 
may enkindle in an increasing number of hearts 
this spark of truth, this first glimpse of heaven, 
this star of which the Apostle, St. Peter, says to 
the Christians: "Ye do well to attend to the 
prophetical word, until the day-star arise in your 
hearts." Then will be realized St. Paul's words, 
" Until we all meet in the unity of the faith, and 
of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a per- 
fect man, unto the measure of the age of the full- 
ness of Christ : that henceforth we be no more 
children tossed to and fro. and carried about with 
every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men." 

Now I understand why Catholic piety every 



MEDITATION XV. 



107 



where multiplies pictures of the Immaculate 
Mother holding her divine Son in her arms : it is 
this image that brings before us all truth under 
its most pleasing aspect. May God be praised 
that He designs to spread the truth by this means ! 
A little picture drawn by the humbliest artist, 
brings the whole Christian creed before the weak- 
est understanding. The poorest woman, before 
her Madonna, sees how much God loves us, and 
in what manner He dwells among us. She sees 
God so closely united to man, that He is Himself 
man. She sees Him borne by His creature, fed by 
her in His human nature. She understands the 
word of St. Paul : "Glorify, and bear God in your 
body." She understands that it is a creature who 
is a virgin, without spot, immaculate who conceives 
God, bears Him and nourishes Him. She be- 
lieves in uncreated perfection, and in created per- 
fection. By the contrast, she knows her own sin 
and weeps for it, but at the same time she sees 
Him who redeemed it and blotted it otit ; hope 
springs up from her sorrow ; she believes in heaven, 
in the eternal possession of God, in eternal life, 
the image of which she has before her eyes. Yes, 
Lord, so it has seemed good to Thee! Thou hast 
revealed these things to the lowly and humble of 
heart, while the learned are yet seeking them. 
And now, Lord, I will ever love and meditate 
upon this holy picture, I will distribute it and make 
it known. Inspire the pencil or the chisel of 
some Christian artist, to embody a type better 
than the best we have, for all fall short of thy 
heavenly beauty. And above all, bless my mind, 
and my imagination, my mental mirror, that I 



108 



MEDITATION XVI. 



may bear therein the image of the immaculate 
Mother, and of her divine Child, but an image 
more heavenly, more lively, more gentle, and more 
compassionate, than any painter here below can 
represent it. Happy are those among Thy saints, 
Jesus! who, while yet on earth, have seen more 
than the picture ! 



MEDITATION XVI. 

Holy Virgin of rirgins, pray for us I 

Pray for us, Virgin of virgins, that some share 
in thy virginity may be given to us, that we may 
also be virgins, in thee, and with thee, and that 
thou mayst indeed be ''the Virgin of virgins" 
for us. 

The chaste soul, is a soul without any trace 
either of pride or of sensuality; it is a soul which 
neither exalts nor debases herself, but holds her- 
self in her own place, in the centre in which God 
has created her, and in which He desires to 
sanctify her. 

Mary! thou alone art altogether a Virgin. 
Neither in thy person, nor in thy free will, in tin- 
nature , in the invisible depths of the soul which 
God only can see, in thine immaculate body, nor 
in those deep abysses of the animal nature, in 
which the will has no part, of which the mind 
understands nought, hast thou ever had the least 
trace, the least beginnings of pride or of sensuality. 



MEDITATION XVI. 



109 



Thou alone Last never exalted thyself, nor debased 
thyself; thou alone didst never wander from that 
position which the Eternal Will had assigned to 
us, and which is the centre from whence He gives 
life, light, heat, fruitfulness, and peace to His 
creature. 

All other souls have lost their primordial vir- 
ginity ; all have either been lifted up or cast down ; 
all have left their place, and the position which 
God assigned them ; all have gone astray, have 
banished themselves, have been wanderers from 
the divine centre and well-spring of life. 

What do I say? Can a creature go astray from 
God? Is He not essentially present in every place, 
in every atom of matter, in every individual soul? 
"No," says St. Augustine, ' ' we cannot be far 
from God in space, but only in will." 1 'God," 
says St. Teresa, "like a fixed sun, is always in 
the very midst of the soul," but, adds this gifted 
woman, who perhaps of all the saints had the deep- 
est knowledge of the soul, "if God is there, we 
are away; our heart is not there." The centre 
and well-spring of the life which we cut out for 
ourselves is not in union with the centre and well- 
spring of the life which God gives or would give us. 

St. Teresa elsewhere says, "Our soul, whose 
greatness is incredible, may be likened to a castle 
surrounded with seven walls. In the midst of 
them all God sits waiting for us, while around the 
seventh wall, outside the castle, we, who never 
enter into ourselves, are marching like sentinels 
who never go inside the palace gates, and know 
only its ditches and its walls." 

But how imperfect are these comparisons, to 



110 



MEDITATION XVI. 



show us the state of the fallen soul! The soul, so 
much more beautiful, so much grander than castle 
or palace could be! 

Might we not rather compare the fallen soul to 
a planet wandering far from its sun, and receiving 
only its distant and diminished rays, superficially 
and one-sidedly ? A planet whose light is never full, 
always needing increase, but always decreasing the 
moment it reaches its meridian; a banished wan- 
derer, always changing from darkness to light, 
and from light to darkness, from the fruitfulness 
of summer to the barrenness of winter, whose fruit- 
ful zones are squeezed up between two icy poles, 
and separated by torrid tropics; a planet which, 
like ours, is always seeking in its perpetual revo- 
lutions the place of its eternal repose — is not thi> 
the best image of the soul? 

Thus the abode of man would be the truest sym- 
bol of the state of his soul. 

But these comparisons fail the moment we come 
to the supernatural regeneration of the soul, that 
wonderful change, whose greatness no man know- 
eth. To carry out the comparison, we ought to 
know what the world will be like after it has been 
transfigured by fire, and changed into the new 
heavens and the new earth, where justice shall 
abide; or else we ought to rise above our earth, 
and ascend to the luminary of which it is said: 
"God hath placed His tabernacle in the Sun." 
And again : 1 ' The woman was clothed with the 
Sun." There we have already found the glorious 
image of Mary, the image of the Virgin of virgins, 
who surrounds on all sides the source of life, who 
receives the fullness of His gifts, and who, without 



MEDITATION XVI. 



Ill 



change of season, or alternations of night and day, 
is clothed and glorified, enlightened and fertilized 
with a mighty aureole of light and fire. Souls in 
a state of grace, but not yet glorified, are in an 
intermediate condition; they are above the earth, 
which only receives its light from without with 
many a change, and they are far below that orb 
which bears in its bosom the source of light, and 
which imparts it to the planets. They will only 
become like it, when according to the divine prom- 
ise, they shall shine like stars in the firmament. 

What, then, is the condition of the soul in the 
state of grace, but still militant? This soul, if I 
may say so, is like a sun in the course of formation. 

It has already become self-luminous, but its light 
is weak, because the imperfections of the soul ex- 
tinguish nearly all its rays. It has the power of 
luminosity, but its light has as yet no brilliancy, 
no expansion, no strength. 

And why ? because it has not as yet thy mater- 
nal virginity, Virgin of virgins. 

The faith teaches us that the soul, though in a 
state of grace, nevertheless, throughout this life, 
ever bears within herself the source of concupis- 
cence along with the source of life; she bears 
within her those darksome pits of the concupis- 
cence of pride, and of the concupiscence of sen- 
suality, whose effects and strength are constantly 
varying with each motion of free-will, and which 
are like the two arms of Satan, embracing the 
source of grace, like those two frightful arms 
wherewith the devil carried the Lord to the top 
of the mountain to tempt Him. The soul bears 
within herself this Sun of iustice, but with it also 



112 



MEDITATION XVI. 



the roots of sin, sources of darkness which will 
seek to extinguish the source of light. This soul, 
still so far removed from thy virginity, Virgin 
of virgins, will perhaps give herself up to her evil 
desires, and like the old people of God, will de- 
spise, reject, and crucify Him who comes to save 
her, to exalt her to heaven, to fill her with radi- 
ance, and to make her like a bright- shining star. 
But perhaps she will unite herself to Him who is 
the source of light and life, and borrow from Him 
such brilliancy and such heat, that she will ascend 
to the heavens and there shine like a star. 

A star in the course of formation, is like a soul 
in which darkness and light are waging war with 
one another. 

But how, Mary, can this heavenly star either 
develop itself to perfection, or fall forever out of 
heaven, and tumble like a dark mass through 
space? In proportion as she comes nearer, or goes 
farther from thee. Virgin of virgins, she either 
develops or falls away — in proportion as she bor- 
rows from thee the power of kindling and radia- 
ting light. But the power of kindling and im- 
planting luminosity in the soul is virginity — vir- 
ginity, either original or recovered. 

Mary, Virgin of virgins! look down on thy 
children, the daughters of Jerusalem, the souls in 
which the sin of Adam has destroyed original 
virginity; look on those whose own personal and 
actual sin, superadded to original sin, has de- 
stroyed their personal virginity; but who, either 
by baptism or penance, have received again the 
source of light and grace, that is to say, God 
Himself. These souls must now be made like to 



MEDITATION XVI- 



113 



Thee, in order to become living tabernacles of 
God. The Word is being born in them, and says 
to thee: " Mother of God, dwell in those souls, 
and spread thy roots in the midst of them. Thou 
didst conceive Me, for thou alone wast worthy, 
thou alone didst merit it; thou hast nourished Me, 
fed Me at thy bosom, carried Me in thy arms, 
hast watched over Me till I enlightened the world, 
and overcame death. Now, my only Mother, 
Mother of the elect, make Me grow also in these 
souls, do thou fashion Me, and bring Me to per- 
fection in them." 

But how can this be? I can well understand 
that God, who can do all things, who is every- 
where, whose presence pervades everything, can 
come into any soul ; but how can the Blessed Vir- 
gin come into my soul ? How shall she dwell in 
me, and I in her? How shall she spread her roots 
in my soul, as Holy Scripture expresses it? 

The way is this. God has said: "Woe to him 
that is alone!" and in another place: "Where 
there are two or three gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them;" and 
again: "They shall have but one heart and one 
soul." The will of God is, in one sense, that the 
whole multitude of souls should be but one. The 
work of God is neither a cloud of dust, nor a heap 
of sand. His new creation must be love and union 
itself. The union of each grape in the unity of 
the bunch, or of each grain of corn in the unity of 
the ear, is but a feeble expression of the union of 
souls in the heavenly city. What is this city, if 
thou art not it, Virgin of virgins, with thy Son 
in thine arms? Who is this vine? Thou also, 



114 



MEDITATION XVI. 



united to Him. W1& is the sacred ear of corn, if 
not thou, of whom it is written: ' 'Thy womb is 
like a heap of wheat ? v> 

To thee, then, we must turn, sacred taberna- 
cle, wherein Grod abides ; we must be joined to 
thee, we must live in thee, Mother of the Church 
of God. Like living grains of wheat, we must 
each be united to thee, who art the ' 'heap." As 
each flower and each fruit is visibly attached to 
the stalk that bears it, and as this link is the canal 
by which the plant nourishes its fruit with its sap, 
so the soul, regenerated in God, must be joined 
to the Mother of grace, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
by a real and living link, by a channel of grace 
which issues from her bosom, and reaches even to 
the soul. This is the meaning of Scripture, when 
it says : 1 1 He that made me rested in my taberna- 
cle, and said to me, Let thy dwelling be in my 
people, and take root in my elect." (Eccles. 
xxiv.13.) By this sacred channel the blood of 
Christ comes to the soul, and gives increase to the 
Word, which it makes incarnate therein. 

But, Virgin of virgins ! all has not yet been 
said. More than this is needed for a soul to be- 
come Mother of the Word, according to the text, 
" Whosoever doeth the will of my Father, he is 
my brother, my sister my mother." It is not 
enough for the Holy Spirit to have drawn the 
fallen soul; it is not enough for Him to have 
begun dwelling in this soul, now re-united to the 
Church ; it is not enough that He should infuse 
His unction into this soul through the centre of 
unity, through the heart of the Mother of the elect, 
and thus begin to form Jesus Christ in this soul ; 



MEDITATION XVI. 



115 



the soul must also allow the divine man to grow 
within her, and must not destroy by her crimes 
the divine fruit which the Spirit of God is forming 
in her. 

Here it is that the strife of grace against sin, 
and of sin against grace, is chiefly manifested. 
Here the free soul may raise herself to heaven by 
her labors and her merits, and by her attention to 
the light within her, or may fall headlong into the 
abyss if she quenches it by her sin. And all de- 
pends upon the progress which the soul can make 
in the attainment of spiritual virginity. Will she 
attain, Virgin of virgins, to the state of unity 
with thee? Will she learn to imitate more and 
more perfectly thy heavenly state, to the utter ex- 
tinction of the flames of concupiscence? Will she 
annihilate them by the might of the divine flame 
of love that dwells in her? or will she allow them 
ever in their sacrilegious banquets to glut them- 
selves like devils even with the Spirit of God, and 
the Blood of Jesus Christ? 

Virgin of virgins! give thy mighty aid to 
the soul in conflict. Obtain for her that inextin- 
guishable hatred which God in the beginning 
placed between thee and the power of the enemy; 
let the touch of thy hands and of thy maternal 
heart give her purity that she may rise, and hu- 
mility that she may be recollected. Let her have 
but these two virtues, and the love of God will 
immediately raise her from the baseness of sensu- 
ality, and abase the contemptible high-mindedness 
of pride. These criminal flames which waste away 
the soul, which divide our heart, and make our 
heart double, and our life wrong either way, 



116 



MEDITATION XVI. 



whether in fancying ourselves raised to an equality 
with the angels, or in descending to the level of 
the brutes — these two springs of evil are dammed 
up by the power of love. The soul regains her 
virginity in thee and by thee, Virgin of virgins! 
The light of truth and holiness, the pure and sa- 
cred fire which is rekindled in the centre of the 
soul, and is fed by her powers in proportion as 
they abandon the springs of pride and sensuality, 
her light and her fire then concentrate themselves 
in her; the spark increases into a brighter and 
stronger flame! the soul, released from those dark- 
ening influences, generates ever-increasing light 
and heat ; the brightness of the eternal light pene- 
trates, traverses, and envelops her; the star is 
formed in holiness, to become one day in heaven 
a star in thy crown, Virgin of virgins! 

Yes, my God, I have often felt in my soul, and 
I may say even in my body, these two forces of 
deadly energy, one of which degrades me, while 
the other puffs me up ; one famishes me and the 
other intoxicates me. how often have I felt 
that immoral hunger of sensuality, which wastes 
away our life, and that drunken pride of the intel- 
lect, which makes our life vanish like smoke! 
What is it that wastes? it is the heart. When- 
ever a life consumes itself in the furnace of con- 
cupiscence, the heart is empty; its love, its heat, 
its energies, its courage and its hopes, all dis- 
appear; its fire, at once purifying, humble and 
mighty, because it is concentrated, is all extin- 
guished, and nothing is left but dust and ashes. 
Is not this the meaning of the prophet, " Their 



MEDITATION XVII. 



117 



heart is nought but ashes?" Yea, Lord, it seems 
that my soul has become like this, emptiness with- 
in, fever and flame without. It seems that my 
body and soul can only escape this state by death. 

Was it not, Lord, to transform our soul and 
our life, that Thou didst suffer Thy face to be 
smitten, Thy head to be crowned with thorns, 
Thy hands and Thy feet pierced through? Yes, 
now I would understand and love the sufferings 
which humble me and purify me, which bring 
down my proud spirit, and chastise my sensual 
flesh. May the tide of my life ebb towards my 
heart, and there concentrate itself, may it be re- 
united to Thee, my God, in the unity of holy love. 



MEDITATION XVII. 

Mother of the Saviour, pray for us ! 

Mary, thou art the Mother of the Saviour and 
the Mother of Salvation. God alone is the Father 
of Salvation, thou, holy Virgin, art its Mother. 

Wherein can we, and ought we, to imitate the 
Mother of the Saviour? In this, that each soul, in 
some sense, should be mother of its own salvation. 
God alone can be the Father, but the soul is its 
mother by co-operating with Him. God could create 
us without ourselves, but He does not save us with- 
out ourselves. In saving each soul, God chooses to 
have a helpmate. This helpmate is the soul herself, 
with her will, her liberty, her efforts, her labor, 
and her merits. 



118 



MEDITATION XVII. 



Mother of the Saviour, Mother of the salvation 
of all men, pray for us, that we may learn more 
and more through thee the necessity of striving, 
of combating, of working, and of meriting. 

We have scarcely emerged from the age when 
our brethren who separated from the Church taught 
that man's endeavors, his works, and his merits, 
were nothing, and when by insisting on "God 
alone, n and " Jesus alone,'' they forgot man, his 
free-will and his merits. They forgot the fatal 
power of sin, as well as the glorious power of man's 
works, which are wrought in God. 

Four errors were interwoven in their dark doc- 
trine : they undervalued sin as an obstacle to sal- 
vation ; they undervalued good works as a means 
of salvation ; they undervalued reason and free- 
will as the agents of each man's salvation ; and 
they caused men to forget the Mother of the Sa- 
viour, the Mother of salvation. They knew not 
that each soul is the mother of its own salvation, 
nor that thou, Mother of Christ, art the mother 
of all salvation. 

These deadly doctrines, whose slightest trail 
poisons all life, have left some small trace even 
among the faithful. Have we not seen divines in 
France timid and reserved in respect of thy wor- 
ship, Mary, and at the same time almost in de- 
spair as to the power of man's works ? ' ' Let us seat 
ourselves in humility," said they, "in the dark- 
ness of this valley of tears, until the light comes to 
us from on high."' The sentiment was good, but 
they forgot that the light is already come, and that 
Christ long ago had said, "rise up and walk." 
Why not then rise up and walk, when Jesus com- 



MEDITATION XVII. 



119 



mandsit? Because we forgot that our free-will 
must co-operate for our own salvation, that Mary 
is the Mother of salvation, and each soul the mother 
of its own. These divines who ventured into the 
dangerous neighborhood of Protestants, could not 
bear the thought of the Immaculate Conception ; 
they believed that evil had infected the work of 
God to its very centre, to the very soul of the 
Mother of God ; and that original sin had corrupted 
the whole mass, so as to leave in man no spark of 
reason and no trace of liberty. They exaggerated 
predestination to the destruction of justice, and 
glorified grace to the suppression of freedom. They 
had too great faith in evil ; they gave too many 
souls to hell, and their doctrines of despair only 
served to multiply the numbers of those who re- 
fused to rise up and walk, because they knew not 
the mystery of the Mother of salvation, itor their 
duties as children of such a mother. 

In proportion, then, Mary, as Chri^Kais shaL 
know thee better as Mother of salvation, s.nd shall 
understand better the duty of following and imi- 
tating thee, and of uniting themselves to thee, not 
merely by their love and their knov<ledge, but still 
more by their acts and their endeavors, is it not 
clear that greater and greater numbers will corre- 
spond to the grace of God ? Is it not true that the 
Christian soul, in which Christ is beginning to be 
formed by the sacraments, will acquire a mother's 
heart, with all her anxieties, Ler watchfulness, and 
her courage ? Men will come to understand better 
one of the meanings of those wonderful words 
wherein our Lord proclaims the law of the last judg- 
ment and declares that ?>vuls will be saved or lost. 



120 



MEDITATION VII. 



according to their works, or rather according to 
their one work — "I was hungry and ye fed me, 
thirsty and ye gave me drink, naked and ye clothed 
me, sick and ye visited me." What does this mean? 
In the sense which we are now developing, it 
means, as our Lord Himself explains it, that it is 
Himself whom you, like a tender mother, have 
visited, clothed and fed, every time that you have 
exercised a mother's office in respect of His forma- 
tion within the least of souls, within thine own 
soul, Christian. 

Yes, this is the law of the last judgment. It is 
not enough to say : ' 'A Child is born to us, who 
is the Saviour;" it is for you also, Christian soul, 
to cry out with joy, " I am His Mother. Hence- 
forth it is my part to watch and to work for Him ; 
when He is hungry, I must feed Him, when He is 
thirsty, I must give Him drink ; when He is weak, 
I must support Him; when He is naked, I must 
clothe Him." 

And what would you be then, Christian soul, 
if you left Him without food when He was hungry 
and thirsty, and took no care of Him when He was 
weak and naked? What would you be in the order 
of grace? Mothers, I will not say among mankind, 
but even among beasts, mothers, by an infallible 
instinct, immediately assume all the strength, all 
the courage, all the patience, all the intelligence 
of motherhood; what are you Christian soul, child 
of Mary, if you know not that you also are mother 
of the Saviour, if you cannot or will not, in union 
with the Blessed Virgin, assume the strength, the 
intelligence, the watchfulness of the Mother of 
salvation in behalf of Jesus Christ? 



MEDITATION XVII. 



121 



Mary, Mother of the Saviour, pray for us! drive 
away sleep, weakness, idleness and sloth from 
Christian souls, and from the midst of the Christian 
nations. Our Saviour is born, let us rise up and 
walk ; let us watch and work to bring Him up, and 
to make Him grow amongst us; let us know the 
eternal merit and the divine power of works 
wrought in God and for God. 

my God, may I never more say unto Thee, 
"I am waiting for grace, I am waiting, for faith 
and for light," for grace is already given me; I 
have enough grace, enough faith, enough light 
even now to* do the will of God: and if I do this 
will to-day, I shall have to-morrow enough grace 
and enough light to do it to-morrow. Yes, Lord ,\ 
In Thy wisdom and Thy mercy, Thou givest us 
day by day our daily bread, and not a store for 
years. The first grace requires a first obedience, 
and then comes another grace, which requires a 
fresh response of the soul's intelligence and free- 
dom ; and he who works with the grace he has re- 
ceived, and uses the talent which has been given 
him, will always receive more. But our first grace 
has been long given us, and a thousand others have 
followed. I have nothing more to wait for then, 
O my God, to enable me to do the good Thou re- 
quirest of me ; I have enough, it is Thou who wait- 
est for me. Wherefore then, my soul, does not 
the world make progress towards knowledge, jus- 
tice, life, and holiness, except because man waits 
while he is waited for? In my soul, as well as in 
the world, God is always striving to be born, and 
to grow; but how often does the divine seed find 
the activity, the generosity, and the unwearied 



122 



MEDITATION XVIII. 



courage of the true mother's heart? admirable 
Mother, do thou pray for us; obtain for us fervor, 
courage and zeal for God. 



MEDITATION XVIII. 

Mother most powerful, pray for us. 

powerful Virgin, pray for us ! Obtain a spark 
of courage for our feeble souls, for our fainting na- 
ture. Make us to know thy power, and the power 
which through thee, in God, every soul and all 
mankind may obtain. 

The principal and proper power of man, is the 
power of prayer : ' * Whatsoever ye shall ask in my 
name," says the Saviour, "ye shall obtain it." 
These words are addressed to that company of 
which Mary is Queen. It is fully and absolutely 
true, without any exception, that whatever the 
Mother of God and Queen of men asks of God 
shall be given to her. But you will say, this is a 
sort of omnipotence ; doubtless it is so ; the Mother 
of God is omnipotent; she is omnipotent by grace, 
as God by nature. This is as it were, an axiom 
of theology; that which belongs to God by nature, 
belongs to the Blessed Virgin by grace. The 
God-Man, a3 man, has all power in heaven and on 
earth, as the Gospel says; but Christ and Mary 
are of one heart and one soul, they are together 
the heart and the life-spring of the regenerated 
world, and it is certain that God performs all the 
wishes of His heart, according to the text : " When 



V 

MEDITATION XVIII. 123 

two of you agree, all that they ask for shall be 
given them." How much more shall the Blessed 
Virgin, united to Jesus Christ by the most won- 
derful union, so as to be but one heart and one 
soul with Him, how much more shall she obtain 
all that she asks, unconditionally, without any pos- 
sible exception! Well, we must say the same of 
every soul which is united to this great heart, and 
which lives by the inspiration of its spirit. What- 
ever she asks, she obtains. Has not God said it? 
" I do the will of those that fear me." How much 
more will He do the will of those that love Him ! 

Besides this universal power of prayer, given to 
those who live in union with the all-powerful 
Virgin, herself indissolubly united to Jesus Christ, 
the first and most important of the special powers 
which is granted to the soul, is the power of over- 
coming sin. To the powerful Virgin it is given to 
crush the serpent's head; to souls who are united 
to her, it is given to overcome sin. Now this 
is what you, Christian soul, must believe with 
an unshaken faith, with a firm hope. What- 
ever may have been the past state of your soul, 
its future may be preserved from evil. Say not 
that you are engaged in the most fruitless of all 
conflicts, and that, for a quarter or perhaps for 
half a century, your life has been like the life of 
the world, in which day succeeds the night, and 
night, the day; that grace has succeeded sin, and 
sin, in its turn, driven out grace, and that a fatal 
vicissitude seems to bind you by an invisible 
chain, which is sometimes relaxed, but can never 
be broken. Say not that you must necessarily 
die thus, striving in vain to fill the vessel which 



124 



MEDITATION XVIII. 



empties itself, or to place on the holy temple the 
stone which falls continually just as it reaches the 
top. Say not that all other graces are given to 
you, but that perseverance alone is denied to you, 
and, in consequence, all progress in good, all 
growth in God, and all hope of eternal life. 
Christian soul, who art discouraged by xjontinual 
falls, rise up; the powerful Virgin can do all. 
She, who corresponds faithfully to all grace, and 
has never wasted an opportunity, can change the 
issue of a combat in which you appear to have 
been losing ground for a long time. Put forth 
one more generous effort to unite yourself to the 
Mother of salvation, and to become the mother 
of your own life ; you must strive to merit it for 
yourself ; one more generous effort, and you will 
assuredly come off victorious! You have been 
living in habitual degradation with your old wounds 
unhealed, and one fall ever leading to another; 
you are now to live in glory and triumph, and are 
to hear the sentence of our Saviour: "To him 
that overcometh, I will give a new name, and I 
will give him power over the nations." 

What does this mean, my God, and what is 
this power over the nations, which Thou dost give 
to souls that are victorious over sin? It means 
that He who hast overcome evil in himself, begins 
to overcome it for others, and that he who is 
united to the King of the nations, and to the 
mighty Queen who crushes the serpent, becomes 
one of their ministers for the salvation of man- 
kind, and for the healing of the nations, of whom 
the Scripture says: "God has made the nations 
of the earth capable of cure." Such a one works 



MEDITATION XVIII. 



125 



for this end, whether by his labors, or by his ex- 
ample, or by preaching, if he is called to it, or by 
prayer, which is all-powerful. 

And is not this, powerful Virgin, the most 
unexpected gift of power which thou bestowest on 
thy children? To heal the nations, to transform 
the world ! And who tells us that the world can 
be transformed? Is not the world progressing 
towards its decrepitude? Is not faith growing 
weak? Ever since the beginning of the world, 
has not mankind been like a sinful soul, which re- 
lapses after every fresh grace, and whose only 
answer to every call of God is to fall away? Is 
not the whole human race perverted by old habits of 
sin? Have not the accumulated crimes of each 
generation, added to the sins of their fathers, has- 
tened the world's fall as it grew older? It is this 
deluge of sin that the soul which has but just con- 
quered herself through Jesus and Mary, would 
stop and overcome. Yes, say the saints, this is 
our desire, and if our Mother asks it, we can do 
it. What Christian would dare deny it? Who 
shall say that Mary asks these things and that she 
shall not obtain them? And who shall dare 
assert that she does not ask them? Those who 
doubt this know not the all-powerful Virgin, i( the 
Virgin hitherto unknown," as the Venerable 
G-rignon de Montfort has called her. And this 
holy man, whose wisdom and virtue shine forth in 
these days, after having been forgotten for nearly 
a century, adds: "I wish to show that the divine 
Mother has been unknown up to this time, and 
that this is one of the reasons why Jesus Christ is 
not known as He ought to be. If, then, as is cer- 



126 



MEDITATION XYIII. 



tain, the reign of Jesus Christ does come upon 
the earth, it will be but a necessary consequence of 
the knowledge and of the reign of the ever-blessed 
Virgin Mary, who first brought Him forth into 
the world, and who, hereafter, will make Him 
more known. Therefore, God wishes that His 
holy Mother should be more known, more loved, 
more honored, than she has ever been before. 
Mary must be more conspicuous than ever in 
mercy, in strength, and in grace, in these latter 
times. God wishes to clothe her anew, and to put 
her forward as the master-piece of His hands. 
He reserves her to form and educate the great 
saints who shall live at the end of the world." 

At that time wonderful things shall come to 
pass in these lower regions, for the Holy Ghost, 
finding His beloved Spouse formed in the souls of 
men, will descend and abundantly fill them with 
His gifts, and particularly with the gift of wisdom, 
and will work wonders of grace. Christian 
soul, when shall this time be? 

All should receive this consoling doctrine — all 
should encourage this holy hope. God, since the 
beginning of the world, and especially since 
Christ's coming, has ever gratuitously poured out 
upon mankind His preventing and exciting grace, 
almost without our co-operation, as when the grace 
of baptism regenerates the unconscious infant — 
God, if I may say so, waits for the moment when 
mankind shall put away childish things, as St, 
Paul requires, and shall arrive at the age of clear 
discretion and true freedom, and so shall be able 
to choose with more prudence between life or 
death, and to appropriate more firmly the gifts of 



MEDITATION XVIII. 



127 



God. Everything is offered, everything is given, 
but mankind has scarcely understood or used the 
gift. Jesus Christ is developed in the Church, 
but He has scarcely come to manhood among the 
nations of Christendom. He has not yet reached 
that perfect growth which will be the consummation 
of the elect; nor has He yet come to that full age, 
to that degree of the mystical growth of His reign 
upon the earth, which the Church and every Chris- 
tian daily prays for: "Thy kingdom come, Thy 
will be done on earth, as in heaven." A prayer 
of deepest meaning, which almost all of us have 
the misfortune to repeat every day without at- 
taching the least meaning to it. 

In these days, Jesus Christ lives and works in 
the Church, as He lived and worked for thirty 
years by Mary's side, while He waited for the 
time of His miracles and His manifestation. 

And for what is He to wait but for that happy 
age, when the Holy Spirit shall find His beloved 
Spouse, the Yirgin, more perfectly formed in our 
souls, and shall overshadow them more fully, and 
fill them with His gifts? And how is this progress 
to be made, if not by the efforts of man, to help, 
to accept, and to retain more faithfully the grace 
already given, and to merit like the Blessed Yir- 
gin, and through her assistance and example, to 
carry God within him in ever-increasing measure, 
and to communicate to the world His eternal life ? 

my God! I understand why Thy Church, 
the sole safeguard of progress in the world, wit- 
nesses with indifference, sometimes even with fear, 
the preachers of progress. The reason is, because 



128 



MEDITATION XVIII. 



in reality all these apostles, so far as we have heard 
them, preach progress, but practice nothing but 
ruin. Do we not know that the spirit of lying 
teaches its followers to call day, night, and night, 
day, as Holy Scripture says? In this way the de- 
cline of this century has been called progress. 
When we are told of progress, which comes through 
pride and intoxication of the senses, we may be 
sure that it is the progress of hell, that is to say, 
the progress of a retrograde movement towards 
what is beneath man, instead of towards God. 
On the contrary, when we see an increase of the 
virgin virtues of humility, of chastity, of purity, 
we may then believe in every kind of progress, 
the progress of justice, the progress of charity, 
the progress of science, the progress of genius, the 
progress of freedom, the progress of power, that 
shall overcome the world, and shall give laws to the 
nations. Therefore, the Catholic Church, by fur- 
thering with all its strength the idea and the worship 
of the Immaculate Mother of God, is the true fur- 
therer of all progress. Yes, Lord, I desire the 
progress of my soul, and the progress of the world. 
I will devote myself to this, to restrain my passions, 
to repress my pride, to live in humility and purity. 
Will this be too great a price to pay for wisdom, 
increase of virtue, truth, freedom, and life, first for 
myself, and then for my fellow men? 



129 



MEDITATION XIX. 

Virgin most faithful, pray for us. 

Virgin, most faithful, to whom the Word incar- 
nate deigned to submit for thirty years, and who 
didst make use of this treasure of all grace so per- 
fectly and faithfully as to open to all the elect the 
well-spring of life, to found and to enlarge the in- 
divisible heart of the Church, which is made up 
of thine immaculate heart, together with that of 
Jesus — to prepare, by the pulsations of this heart, 
all mankind to receive the Word, the Blood, and 
the Spirit of our Saviour — Mary, Virgin most 
faithful, pray for us, that we too may be faithful; 
let our hearts beat in sympathy with thine, that 
we may learn to receive with ever greater faith- 
fulness the gifts of God, and to make use of them 
to prepare the way for the glorious reign of Jesus 
Christ. 

Make us all understand how everything now 
depends on our faithfulness. God has lent us His 
talents, it is for us to put them to interest. It is for 
us to choose which of the servants in the Gospel we 
will resemble. Will we copy the good and faith- 
ful servant who used his one talent so as to gain 
ten, or the wicked and slothful servant who buried 
his talent in the earth and there left it idle? 

Shall mankind still bury in its bosom the treas- 
ure of the Incarnate Word, and leave His Gospel, 
His cross, His life, and all the virtue of His blood 
that was shed for us, unfruitful to the end? 

St. Gregrory the Great has some terrible words 



130 



MEDITATION XIX. 



on this subject, in a Commentary on tlie text of 
the Gospel where the master comes for the third 
time to visit the barren fig-tree, and commands 
his servants to cut it down. "Yes," he says. 
" the master of the vineyard in our day is come 
the third time to visit His fig-tree, He has come 
three times to call men, to wait for them, to warn 
them, and to visit them, before the law, under the 
law, and under grace. He came before the law, 
because He teaches us by natural reason what each 
of us owes to His brethren ; He came under the 
law to give us His positive commands ; He comes 
after the law by grace, to give men the real pres- 
ence of His divine goodness. And this is why 
He complains of finding no fruit any of these 
three years, because so many wicked men are 
touched neither by the inspiration of the natural 
law nor by the commands of the written law, nor 
by the miracle of the Incarnation/' 

Virgin most faithful, Queen and Mother of man- 
kind, wilt thou sutler us, by our perpetual faith- 
lessness, to become barren fig-trees, unimproved 
by all the gardener's toil? Shall this barrenness 
be the last state of mankind? Will God be 
obliged to say to us what the master of the vine- 
yard said to the bad tree : 1 4 Cut it down, why 
cumbereth it the ground?'' Or rather, most faith- 
ful Virgin, Queen and Mistress of mankind, wilt 
thou not say to God what the gardener said to his 
master: Lord, have patience yet one year, and I 
will dig around it, and manure its roots, and per- 
haps it will bear fruit: if not, then cut it down? 

Yes. this is our hope, that the new toils of the 
gardener may heal our barrenness. Through 



MEDITATION XIX. 



131 



thee, most faithful Virgin, through a more en- 
lightened knowledge of thee, through imitating 
thee, through a greater development of thy wor- 
ship, man may yet become more faithful, and 
prepare the earth to bring forth the fruits of the 
kingdom of God. Man may yet put out his tal- 
ent to interest, and God, who, in St. Gregory's 
forcible words, waits for mankind, may yet find a 
harvest upon the earth, when He sends forth His 
reapers. 

What, then, are these new toils of the husband- 
man for the growth of the divine seed? "What is 
to be this increased faithfulness of man, as steward 
of the treasure which is placed in his hands ? 
What is it that God waits for? 

The treasure, or divine seed, is the Incarnate 
Word; the labors which He waits for are those 
which he commands in His Gospel, and which He 
declares will decide the salvation of each soul, and 
of the world. He is hungry, and would be 
fed; naked, and would be clothed; sick, and would 
be visited; but how can Jesus Christ be sick, and 
naked, and hungry, and thirsty? I own that un- 
less He had said so, it would have been incredi- 
ble, but He has said : " I was hungry, and thirsty, 
sick, and naked;" and He adds, "every time ye 
have done so to the least of these little ones, ye 
have done it unto me.' 

This, then, is what God is waiting for. Or, to 
speak more plainly, Jesus Christ is waiting in ex- 
pectation till His mystical body, which is the 
Church, and in some sense all mankind, as St. 
Thomas Aquinas says — He is waiting till this 
mystical body, which, in so many of its members 



132 



MEDITATION XIX. 



is hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and in prison, shall 
become the object of a far greater solicitude to 
those who have the grace and the power. He 
would have us treat His mystical body, as Mary, 
the faithful Virgin, treated His Childhood. 

Yes, Christ asks to be fed, cured clothed, and 
educated in the persons of the poor, the sick, the 
naked, and the ignorant. He requires us to re- 
move the hindrances to His growing to perfect 
manhood. He asks for Himself this care and 
these toils. And why? because this care and 
these toils develop the virtues of the faithful 
Virgin in the soul of the man who gives himself 
to them, and in the souls of those on whom they 
are exercised. That to say, because they prepare 
the way for the growth of the Word amongst men. 

He waits for mankind to bestow a different educa- 
tion on children, on the ignorant and the weak, 
and a different charity on the poor. He expects 
that we should see Him in the child we educate, 
and in the poor whom we relieve. 

Virgin most faithful, pray for us, obtain for us 
the gift of faithfulness. Give us that Mother's 
heart towards the Infant Jesus, which is the only 
pledge of true fidelity. Let us be the mother and 
faithful handmaid of J esus Christ ; let us never 
more abandon or neglect His childhood, His weak- 
ness, His hunger, His thirst, His nakedness, or 
His poverty. 

May we never hereafter neglect the least of 
these little ones, who are in captivity, either in our 
own soul, or in other men, where the Son of Man 
waits for us to release Him, that He may increase 
and reign. 



MEDITATION XIX. 



133 



Yes, Lord, I will make fresh endeavors to till 
the ground of my own soul, and the whole field 
of human nature. I could never understand the 
neglect of mankind for its poor, its sick, its dying, 
its children; it scandalizes its children, it deceives 
the dying by concealing their danger ; it looks at 
the poor without understanding them, without 
seeing God in them. But thanks be to God, this 
is scarcely true now of Christian countries. Where 
the spirit of St. Vincent of Paul has gone forth — 
and where has it not? — those endeavors, which, 
in all ages of the Church had been practiced by 
the saints, have been redoubled. There is a 
greater respect for His Childhood in children, for 
His poverty in the poor and sick, arising around 
us, and attracting the hearts of men. These 
forms of Catholic worship win the nations which 
have come to maturity, as its visible splendors 
win the nations which are still children. Be 
brave then, Christians, advance with more and 
more determination in the worship of the poverty 
of Jesus, His childhood, His captivity, His weak- 
ness, and His suffering. This worship will be the 
true fertilizing of the earth, the tillage which God 
will bless, which will deliver the world from its 
moral barrenness, and which may prepare a rich 
harvest for the last ages of man's life upon earth. 



134 



MEDITATION XX. 

Virgin most merciful, pray for us. 

Virgin most merciful, pray for us ; teach us by 
what means thy heavenly likeness may be multi- 
plied among men ; teach us how to hope that a great- 
er number of souls may attain to thy virtues ; that 
souls which are better prepared, because they are 
more like to thee, may receive more abundantly 
the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit being 
more worthily received amongst men, the mystical 
Body of Jesus Christ may develop with increased 
splendor, and may hasten the coming of His 
kingdom. 

For this end, Virgin most merciful, make us 
understand what mercy is. 

Mercy, if we look at the real sense, and at the 
root of the word, is not only a gentleness which 
pardons, but also a goodness which communicates 
itself — it is one soul going forth to meet another. 

Thus, not only does thy merciful soul, Mary, 
go forth to meet other souls, but she also commu- 
nicates and gives herself to all. Mary, as the 
Church tells us in the office of the Immaculate 
Conception, gives herself to all, and seeks to fill 
every thing. And, as the Sun of Justice, Jesus 
Christ, our God, makes His light shine on the 
good and on the wicked, so the Blessed Virgin, 
this unchangeable light, sheds upon all men the 
rays of her mercy, and shows herself to all full 
of sweetness and clemency. 

That is to say, this perfect Virgin imitates God. 



MEDITATION XX. 



135 



"God exists necessarily," says St. Thomas, 
"and is therefore necessarily good, and therefore 
expansive, and therefore He must give Himself 
to any one who can receive Him." And the 
foundation of our religion is Jesus who gives Him- 
self to all, who died for all, who came to give all 
men His blood, His flesh, His soul, His Spirit, 
His divinity. And now the mystery of the king- 
dom of God, of the progress of the Church, and 
of the world, is open to our view. 

There is God the Father, the giver of all; there 
is Jesus, King of men, also giver of all ; there is 
the most holy Virgin, Mother of God, Queen and 
Mother of mankind, who receives and transmits 
all that is given ; there are the saints who receive 
and transmit the waves of grace; why then does 
not the light, the life, the grace, the Spirit of 
God, come to all, even to the lowest, even to those 
whom our Lord calls the least of the little ones ? 

Evidently the cause must be something which 
is an obstacle to the coming of the kingdom of God, 
and to God's being all in all ; the chain of grace 
must be broken somewhere. The waves of light, 
and the torrents of pleasure, as the Scripture call 
them, well forth from the Father, and flow on to 
the Word, to the Incarnate Word, and from the 
Word to the Immaculate Virgin, who receives, 
gathers up and passes on the fullness of the gifts. 
Underneath the Virgin, the saints pass on each 
his own part of the gift which he receives, but 
beneath the saints the confusion begins. There 
are found the souls who are called to holiness, but 
never reach it ; there are found the guiltiest per- 
haps of souls, those to whom Jesus and Mary give 



136 



MEDITATION XX. 



much, but who accept little, and pass on still less ; 
there it is that the chain of graces is broken : it 
is there that the sun's rajs are stopped ; and why? 
because these souls never go forth to meet their 
fellows; they are concentrated in themselves, they 
have not love enough, they love not with the love 
which goes out of itself, and gives itself either 
to God to receive His grace, or to their neighbor 
to pass it on. 

In the mystical Body of Christ, these souls are 
members which stop the blood, veins through 
which no life runs. This is the mystery of ini- 
quity, the mystery of self-love; opposed to the 
love of God. and of mankind. These are the 
souls of which St. James speaks, who pray sel- 
fishly, and only ask for life in order to consume 
it on their lusts. These are the stewards of whom 
the Gospel speaks, who sleep, drink, eat, and beat 
their fellow-servants, while waiting for the return 
of their master. 

And what is probably required by numbers of • 
these souls, to enable them to pass over to the 
side of the saints, to leap over the wall, to cease 
to be obstacles, and to become instruments, to pass 
on the light and the life instead of stopping them? 
They require a little more knowledge of the mys- 
tery of the Virgin, and a little more faithfulness 
in her worship. They require to learn from the 
Mother of mankind how to make their soul expand 
towards their neighbor. 

The prophet Isaias explains all this to us : You 
who are called by God, who believe yourselves 
Christians, and perhaps pious and holy ones, listen 
well to this solemn lesson: "They seek me from 



MEDITATION XX. 



137 



day to day, and desire to know my ways, as a na- 
tion that hath done justice, and hath not forsaken 
the judgments of their God: they ask of me the 
judgment of justice : they are willing to approach 
God ! Why hast Thou not regarded ? say they to 
God: we have humbled ourselves, and thou hast 

not taken notice! This is the state of these 

souls*, and the inspired text teaches us, that they 
are thus barren because they are attached to them- 
selves, and know not how to give, but weary them- 
selves in their selfishness. Then the prophet adds 
in God's name : ' * Is not this rather what I have 
chosen? loose the bands of wickedness, undo the 
bundles that oppress, let them that are broken go 
free. Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the 
needy and harborless into thy house : when thou 
shalt see one naked, cover him. Then shall thy 
light break forth as the morning, and thy health 
shall speedily arise, and thy justice shall go before 
thy face, and the glory of the Lord shall gather 
thee up. 

"Thou shalt call, and the Lord shall hear: 
thou shalt cry, and He shall say : Here I am. 
When thou shalt pour out thy soul to the hungry, 
and shall satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy 
light rise up in the darkness, and thy darkness 
shall be as the noon-day. 

"And the Lord will give thee rest continually, 
and will fill thy soul with brightness, and deliver 
thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, 
and like a fountain of water, whose waters shall 
not fail." (Isaias ch. lviii.) 

If we could but understand these deep myste- 
ries, Virgin most merciful, whose soul conde- 



138 



MEDITATION XX. 



scends to all, and pours itself forth into all souls! 
thou who art the noon-day of light, the living 
fountain that never faileth, teach our souls to un- 
derstand, to feel, and to practice thy virtues, that 
in God, and through thee, they may become full 
of unfailing light. 

Shall we never understand that all mankind is 
one whole, a body in which each member receives 
and ought also to give ? Life should live and cir- 
culate; it comes to all, he who would stop it loses 
it. He who consents to lose it, finds it. Each 
soul, if it would live, should pour itself forth into 
another soul. But what is this other soul? Are 
we speaking of human love and friendship? No. 
We are speaking of that poor and hungry soul, 
that man, whoever he is, whom Jesus calls the 
least of these little ones. We are speaking in 
every sense of the words, of feeding the hungry, 
of helping the weak, of clothing the naked, of 
delivering the prisoner. So that as our Lord says, 
men have but one duty, as there is but one rule 
for the last judgment — to serve God in the poor, 
to take care of Christ in His Childhood and pov- 
erty, in the least of His little ones. God, shall 
we be always without reason or feeling? Shall 
we never understand this manifest law of true re- 
ligion? How long shall the man who receives 
from God some gift, whether life, or strength, or 
youth, or health, or knowledge, or faith, or any 
other gift of grace, or mere silver and gold ; — how 
long shall he go on fancying that this gift is to stop 
in him and be consumed by him? how long shall he 
refuse to understand that every gift of God, is a 



MEDITATION XX. 



139 



force which must be passed on, in order to be 
preserved and multiplied. 

How long shall those who have received in good 
measure some gifts of God behold without emotion 
the immense multitude of men famishing in soul, 
in mind and in body? How long shall they for- 
get that in the least of His little ones the Incar- 
nate word suffers and endures? 

How long shall Christian nations refuse to be- 
lieve that Christ expects from them a different 
education for His childhood, a different care for 
His poverty, whether within themselves, or around 
them, in those multitudinous races which still sit 
in the weakness of their world-old poverty, and 
aged childhood ? 

When shall we learn that the kingdom of God 
consists entirely in this point, thus expressed in 
the sacred text: "Give and take, and justify thy 
soul?" (Eccl. xiv. 16.) To receive from the 
Father and from the Incarnate Word, and from 
the Mother of God, some rays in order to transmit 
them to the last and least of the poor ; to perpetu- 
ate in this manner out of disinterestedness and the 
spirit of sacrifice, the chain of graces and the pro- 
gress of light; that we may receive from God a 
double portion of light and grace, again to trans- 
mit them from an overflowing and ever more gen- 
erous heart? 

If we would but comprehend these truths, and 
if we would begin practicing them at the easiest 
end, namely, by a more liberal bestowal of our 
gold and silver, that we may come by degrees, 
like Jesus and Mary, to give our sweat and our 
blood, is it not plain, that, by degrees also, the 



140 



MEDITATION XXI. 



virtues of the Mother of God would enter into our 
souls, her likeness be engraved there, that the 
Spirit of God would pour Itself out on them, that 
the Word would grow in them, first of all in those 
who give, and then in those who receive, and that 
the reign of God would prosper among men ? 

Virgin most merciful, thou seest how hard it 
is for us to understand these truths, to see them 
clearly when we get a glimpse of them, and, above 
all, to practice them ; thou knowest the obstacles 
which hinder the soul from receiving all that God 
would bestow, and from passing on all that it has 
received; pray then, that by fresh endeavors we 
may come nearer to this light and this power, pray 
that we may be able to approach nearer to thee, 
the pure well-spring of the light and the power 
which God grants to men. Pray that we may 
come to know the obstacle which hinders our soul 
from receiving all that God would give it, and 
from passing on the little which it has received. 



MEDITATION XXI. 

Mother of mercy, pray for us I 

Mother of mercy, pray for us ! Obtain for us the 
virtue of mercy, or tenderness of heart. Only the 
pure heart is merciful. Without thy immaculate 
heart, there would be no mercy in the world. 
Obtain for us that purity of heart, whose fruit is 
compassionate love. 



MEDITATION XXI 



141 



Mother of mercy, when thou holdest in thine 
arms the divine child who carries the world sur- 
mounted with His cross, thou beholdest this world 
brimful of sorrows, and thou say est, Behold my 
Son who shall wipe away the tears from every eye. 

Jesus also beholds this globe, and sees the peo- 
ple sitting in darkness, and the shadow of death, 
beaten down, trodden underfoot, and scattered 
like sheep without a shepherd. He beholds all 
these sorrows at one glance, and He says, " I will 
give my life for them." And the Mother of mercy 
says, "I will give my Son for them." "I am 
come," says our Saviour, " to cast fire on the earth, 
and how do I long for its kindling." What is 
this fire, Jesus, but that which Catholic piety 
represents in pictures, where we see the heart of 
Mary pierced with a sword, coupled with the Heart 
of Jesus crowned with thorns, with flames issuing 
from both? These flames are the flames of love, 
they are the flames of compassion that has become 
love, even to the desire of martyrdom, at the sight 
of the miseries of the world. 

And we, shall we never have a single spark of 
this fire ? Shall no other hearts but those two ever 
know the hearty, intelligent, active, efficacious, 
fervent pity, the heavenly mercy, which involves 
forgetfulness of self, and devoted itself even to 
death and martyrdom? Shall not this fire spread 
its consolations over the earth, Mary, Mother 
of mercy, through the growth of the knowledge 
and the imitation of thee ? 

Mary, let our eyes see, let our minds know, 
let our hearts feel this glance of J esus' eye upon 
the world. Help us to keep our thoughts fixed 



142 



MEDITATION XXI. 



on this globe surmounted by the cross which is 
borne by the Infant Jesus in the arms of His 
Mother. Instead of limiting our view within the 
sphere of our own interest, of our own persons, 
teach us to extend it to the whole world. Is this 
world, men, too large for your hearts, while 
Jesus your brother, Himself a man, supports it in 
one hand ? This world, which your brethren of the 
race of Adam, the heroes of the earth, have found 
too small for their glory ? At this very time science 
is about to lay down electric lines by which 
all parts of the world will be connected together, 
and by means of which two men from one pole to 
the other will speak to each other, as if they were 
joining hands! And think you, that while these 
inferior forces, latent in the metal which transmits 
them, thus encircle the whole world, the spiritual 
force latent in, and emanating from, the human 
soul shall be less extensive and ever unable to 
encircle the world? 

There is a nation which always keeps its eyes 
on all parts of the globe. They study and consider 
it; they seek for all that is to be had in it, and 
for the shortest roads by which to bring all things 
into their possession. And when a fresh portion 
has been discovered, which contains some hidden 
mine of wealth, of whatever kind it may be, that 
portion is immediately drained to swell the treasure 
of the rich metropolis, to which their hearts are 
attached. my God, shall there not also be 
another kind of investigators, whether in the midst 
of this very nation or elsewhere, who shall know 
how to study and consider the world, who shall 
know what service they have to render to it; and 



MEDITATION XXI. 



143 



if possible, what are the necessities of each nation, 
of each individual, and what ways and means will 
bring to all true light and life? 

Mother of Mercy, the world is now spread 
out before me; guide me, and show me what I 
ought to see there; teach me, I pray thee, how to 
look upon the world. 

And, first of all, I see what the Saviour saw, 
men seated in darkness and the shadow of death. 
This darkness covers three quarters of the earth; 
Christians form but the fifth part of the whole 
population of the world. And yet those nations 
that are Christians are the masters of the world. 
Their science, their arts, the wonders of their dis- 
coveries, the order of their undertakings, the vigor 
of their associations, give them power to change 
the face of the earth whenever they choose. They 
have but to wish it. In the meanwhile, the rest 
of mankind rots away in nameless vices, in sorrow, 
degradation, want, frightful miseries, in all the 
inexpressible horrors of savage and barbarous life. 
The systematic murder of infants, the slavery of 
women, universal and unrestrained licentiousness, 
intemperance that undermines the constitution of 
races, a deadly indolence, brute passions of de- 
struction, the union of rage and hunger which 
drives man to eat man's flesh, such are the most 
striking points in the picture. 

When I turn my eyes towards Christian nations, 
my first surprise is to see how they witness the 
frightful spectacle of the suffering world without 
any deep emotion, and without seeking, as Scrip- 
ture says, to order the whole world in justice and 



144 



tfff^llATION X 



equity. But this is only because they are far from 
enjoying the full light of God. 

The light comes down from heaven, but where 
are they who receive it? The little they receive 
from without makes them the masters and guides 
of mankind, but what blind guides! They use 
their light for their bodily pleasure, for ruling over 
nature, for extending the dominion of physical 
science, and of the arts which fashion matter; 
their social virtues are earthly, and have no refer- 
ence to eternal life ; and the supernatural light of 
J esus Christ, that eternal light which was to heal 
our fallen nature, and to raise it on high, though 
it has healed some wounds, has not greatly ele- 
vated the whole mass, which is still stubborn 
against its influences. 

Even of those who believe themselves to be 
Thine, Christ, every one employs what little 
light and strength he has chiefly for his own good; 
none is without an eye to self in serving Thee; 
none looks beyond his own narrow circle; none 
beholds the world and its misery, or Thy cross. 
The virtue of mercy, of loving pity, never flames 
up in these straitened hearts ; their eyes are tear- 
less when they behold the sorrows of soul and body 
that surround them. Far from wishing through 
love of man, and through love of Thee, to make 
the whole world serve Thee, scarce any one thinks 
of converting his own town or his own house to 
Thy service. 

Instead of inquiring all over the world what 
each nation needs, they take no trouble to heal 
the sorrows which force themselves on their notice ; 
they forget how the ancient law said, " thou shall 



MEDITATION XXI. 



145 



not permit, Israel, a single indigent person 
among thy tribes;" or if they think of it, they 
believe that this law was for the Jews, and not for 
Christians. 

This coldness of heart, which refuses to be kin- 
dled by the flames which proceed from the hearts 
of J esus and Mary, is the reason of the slow pro- 
gress of the world. Mother of Mercy, when 
wilt thou warm these hearts which thou wouldst 
kindle, but which never burn, these hearts nearest 
to thine after those of the saints, yet perhaps most 
guilty of all, because they hinder the progress of 
life, and divide the bounteous heaven from the 
craving earth? 

To my eyes, the world presents but these two 
features ; the rest is immaterial ; there is the mass 
of mankind sunk in darkness, and in the midst of 
this mass there is Christendom, only half accepting 
the light that shines upon it. When the light 
shall kindle into a flame, as in the hearts of Jesus 
and Mary, the fire which Jesus Christ came to 
cast upon the earth, shall enfold the whole earth 
in a moment. 

Mother of Mercy, grant me a new heart. If I 
cannot renew the world, I will try to renew my- 
self. Surely, the fire will burn within me, if with 
Jesus and thee I often turn mine eyes on mankind 
on this globe surmounted by the cross. 

When I pray, it shall be in the presence of 
J esus and of His Mother, and of this globe which 
they carry. 

I am determined that no human thing shall 
henceforth be without interest for me, for I know 



146 



MEDITATION XXI. 



that there is a certain historical science necessary 
for the Christian the science which takes cogni- 
zance of the present state of the world. I bless 
God that this science is already brought down to 
the level of the merest peasant by the Society for 
the Propagation of the Faith. I will study it, 
that I may teach it ; I will learn it, that I may 
transmit it, and make my children learn the sci- 
ence of human nature suffering beneath our eyes, 
rather than teach them the classics of antiquity. 

With all my heart, and all my strength, I will 
propagate mercy, and daily will I call upon thy 
name, Mother of Mercy. I will try to make it 
renowned ; I will keep my heart pure, that the fire 
may kindle there, for the least spark of the fires 
of earth quenches all traces of the heavenly fire. 

I will try to understand how thy heart, if it had 
been for a moment sullied with concupiscence, 
could never be in union with that of Jesus, the 
well-spring of the heavenly fire which is to cleanse 
the world, and which Jesus wishes to see kindled. 

I will enter, also, with all my heart, into the 
spirit of St. Vincent of Paul, which leads men 
back to faith through the paths of compassion. 

I will never forget the striking lesson of St. 
Vincent's life, how he was tempted to infidelity 
for three years, and overcame the temptation by 
devoting himself to the poor, thus regaining a 
lively faith through practicing that compassion of 
heart, that sympathy with the poor, that loving 
mercy which constitutes his distinctive spirit. In 
the presence of this model, still so near to us, still 
as it were living amongst us, I would ask my 
brethren what is the use of the days of our life, 



MEDITATION XXII. 



147 



except to do some good? What is the use of power 
and riches, if not to open the channels of truth 
and mercy to the world? 

I will try to understand the insensibility, malice, 
and stupidity of habitually beholding all this 
darkness and sorrow without taking any decided 
and bold steps in behalf of justice and truth. To 
see Jesus Christ, and the saints and the apostles, 
and the servants of God carrying their cross, and 
going forth alone to fight against evil, and to con- 
quer the world to God, without being drawn on 
to follow them. 



MEDITATION XXII. 

Virgin most prudent, pray for us. 

Virgin most prudent, pray for us, and obtain 
for us that prudence which perceives the obstacle 
and avoids it. 

The obstacle of the soul, thou, Virgin most 
prudent, hast always avoided. Never didst thou 
allow it to arise in thee, never was there the least 
hindrance to the entrance of God's light in thee, 
nor to the transmission of His light to the world ; 
for thou receivedst God himself; thou didst con- 
ceive the very God in thy heart, in thy mind, 
and in thy body, and thou didst transmit to the 
world the incarnate light. 

If the science of the soul was known, men would 
know what is the obstacle of all souls, and how 
each soul bears it within her, except the immacu- 



148 



MEDITATION XXII 



late soul of the Virgin most prudent. Then 
would they know that conformity with this model 
is necessary in order to overcome the obstacle to 
all progress. 

Let us try to understand something on this point. 

St. Bernardine, of Sienna, compares thy immacu- 
late heart, Virgin most prudent, ' 'to the focus 
of a burning lens, which concentrates from all 
sides the rays of the sun ; the focus collects them, 
begets the fire, and enkindles everything that 
comes near to it." No words can give a better 
idea of the immaculate soul of Mary, without 
spot or obstacle, conceiving God, imparting God, 
and fruitful through her virginity. 

For if we inquire what constitutes the power 
of these wonderful mirrors which concentrate the 
sun within themselves, which contain and send 
forth its heat, we shall find that it is their col- 
lecting together in one focus, in one single centre, 
all the rays of the sun which fall upon them. 
Other mirrors also receive the same rays, but they 
have not the power to concentrate them; they 
have no focus, no centre, no single spot to attract 
them to. 

Thus it is that thy prudence, Mary, which 
transfigures thy soul into light, consists in reducing 
into unity and simplicity all the rays of the life 
which God gives, like the heavenly Jerusalem, 
of which thou art the Queen and centre, and which 
is " built as a city, which is compact together." 

I am not surprised at the sovereign importance 
of this simplicity and this unity in the life of the 
soul, for it is the mark whereby Jesus Christ 
himself distinguishes between £ood and eviL be- 



MEDITATION XXII 



149 



tween the life and death of the soul. k; If thy 
eye be single, thy whole body will be lightsome; 
but if it be evil, thy body also vail be darksome." 
(Luke xi. 34.) 

These mysterious words show us the law of the 
human heart, and teach us that it needs only to be 
simple and at unity in itself in order to possess the 
light and to dispense it ; while on the contrary, 
the mere absence of simplicity is enough to make 
it evil, and incapable of producing anything but 
darkness. 

But what is it that causes our heart to lose its 
simplicity ? 

Listen to the lessons of the masters of the spi- 
ritual life c ' Woe to the double heart 1" says Scrip- 
ture. The Holy Grhost tolls us of a certain 
doubleness of soul, and the most learned doctors 
point out to us how it is a necessary consequence 
of sin. There are in the soul, say they, diverse 
forces, and amongst these there are two principal 
ones ; the active force, which understands and 
judges, and ought to govern ; and the passive 
force, that of desire, which ought to be governed: 
and these forces ought to form but one. 

There is, in a manner, a male and female ele- 
ment in the soul ; an Adam and an Eve ; and 
as it is said that the man and wife are two in one, 
so the two facultes in the same soul should be but 
two in one. 

The soul should be simple, that is, its forces 
should live in unity, that all the gifts and all the 
rays of life may be concentrated, in this single 
focus. But is it so? No. All souls have lost 
their union, all are at variance with themselves. 



150 



MEDITATION XXII. 



In all, the passive desire is in schism with the 
active understanding and judgment. The passive 
part separates itself from, and often divides, the 
active powers, enlisting the judgment, without 
enlisting the understanding. It leaves the reason 
alone, and drags down the desires and the will to 
its own abyss. But can we think that the lower 
part of the soul, the desire, could ever have 
shaken off the yoke of the higher part if this had 
remained faithful ? No, its union was in God, 
and the forces of the soul can only be at discord 
with themselves by abandoning God. The lower 
part of the soul abandons God through sensuality, 
the higher part through pride. One grovels in 
lust, the other soars with presumption. Neither 
of the two remains in that central place where the 
soul can receive God. The true centre of the 
soul becomes empty, and in place of this one 
centre the soul assumes that double heart which 
the Gospel curses, that evil and double eye which 
fills the whole soul with darkness. 

The true centre of the soul is empty, and in- 
stead of this simple centre, the soul clusters around 
two points which divide life between them. In 
one she gathers up the fire which consumes her, 
because it is neither chaste nor luminous ; in the 
other she fancies she stores up light, but she only 
stores up a pale reflection of it, enough to feed 
pride and error. Then follows the fearful mar- 
riage of the murky and evil fire with this pale light, 
the union of pride and of sensuality, which can 
produce nothing but darkness and sin. 

These two centres are called by theologians the 
concupiscence, the cause and consequence of sin. 



MEDITATION XXII. 



151 



All errors, all sorrows, all evil flow from this 
source; it is the true obstacle of the soul. 

This is the teaching of our doctors, derived from 
Holy Scripture. 

Now we can see, prudent Virgin, what thy 
soul is, and what ours is. Now we understand 
how impossible it is that the soul of the pure Vir- 
gin Mother of God, can have been for an instant 
divided and decomposed into two centres, so as to 
change the divine life into pride and sensuality. 
A single instant of this fearful schism is the loss 
of true virginity. If original sin, or even concu- 
piscence, had ever been in Mary, if she had not 
been ever immaculate, her soul was not virginal, 
her innocence was but mended and patched like 
ours. But she is in reality the one true Virgin, 
and never was there in her the slightest trace of 
sin or concupiscence. 

As to ourselves, let us well understand the state 
of our interior life. Not one of our souls is ab- 
solutely single, nor absolutely virginal. Every 
soul bears within herself the springs of pride and 
of sensuality, more or less developed, more or less 
distant from their centre. In all the matter of 
sin is continually being reproduced, and gains 
activity day by day through the mere influence of 
life 

What, then, is the remedy of the soul? It is 
to fight and to struggle continually that she may 
return to simplicity, wherein lies her perfection, 
or at least that she may approach it; and this 
would be, Virgin most prudent, to make our 
souls conformable to thine, to return to God and 
to thee, to come to God through thee. 



152 



MEDITATION XXII. 



The masters of the spiritual life, and especially 
St. Augustine, say that we have Adam and Eve 
within us, that one is for us the spring of pride, 
and the other of sensuality. Why should we not 
also say that we have within us, in the innermost 
part of our being, in the sanctuary, as it were, 
the new Eve and the new Adam, that is to say, 
thyself and thy Son in one? And certainly it 
must be so in Christians who receive the body of 
Jesus, his soul and divinity. 

But these two divine guests pass quickly through 
the lower powers and the exterior circles of the 
soul, in an instant they are in the centre, where 
the soul ought to concentrate her powers ; they 
enter there to attract us and bring back to their 
centre the two forces purified, the one by humility, 
the other by chastity. 

This is truly the mystery of the progress of 
souls. 

Mary, pray for us! That the mystery of the 
progress of souls by their union with thee, and 
with thy Son Jesus Christ, that the means of 
returning to simplicity, which is all-powerful, to 
virginity, which is fruitful, by humility and by 
chastity, may be better known among men, and 
that the immeasurable advantages which this 
return would bestow on each individual soul and 
on the whole world, may become evident to the 
eyes of all. 



153 



MEDITATION XXIII. 

Gate of Heaven, pray for us ! 

The mystery of the progress of souls is not yet 
sufficiently known. The mystery of the Gate of 
Heaven is not yet sufficiently unveiled in the sight 
of Christians, even in that of the learned and 
pious Christians. This is, at least, the opinion of 
two authors, who are alike eminent for their tal- 
ents and holiness. 

We will quote from each successively. 

The venerable Grignon de Montfort thus speaks 
of the means of attaining true devotion to the 
Blessed Virgin, and a faithful imitation of her, 
in order that we may dwell in God through her : 

"The practice which I seek to discover is one 
of those secrets of grace which are unknown to 
the greatest number of Christians, even to the 
devout, and which are practiced and appreciated 
by a still smaller number." 

And in describing the practice, he first of all 
lays down the necessity of fighting against and 
extinguishing the springs of concupiscence, the 
evil root by which our best actions are ordinarily 
infected and corrupted. "Even when God pours 
out the sweet wine of His love, the heavenly dew 
of His grace, into the vessel of our soul, foul with 
original and actual sin, His gifts are usually pois- 
oned and defiled by the evil leaven and the root 
of bitterness which sin has left in us; all our ac- 
tions, even those of the highest virtue, are affected 
by it." 



154 



MEDITATION XXIII. 



This it is from which we have to free ourselves ; 
and how is it to be done? This root is our life ; it 
is the life of our soul, such as we make it. The 
secret, continues Grignon, of the true supernatural 
life, of the life which God wishes to impart to us, 
is death to ourselves, that fruitful and useful death 
which St. Paul means when he says ' '1 die daily," 
that death which our Lord enjoins, when He tells 
us to deny ourselves, to hate our own life. "He 
who seeketh life shall lose it, and he who consents 
to lose it, shall find it." (Luke xvii. 33.) 

Is it not clear? In order to find this true and 
perfect life which God desires to infuse into the 
centre of our souls, which He created to dwell in 
the centre to which the Incarnate Word is ever- 
more calling us, while the pride of Adam and the 
sensuality of Eve, the two-fold force of pride and 
concupiscence, are evermore tempting us away from 
it; in order to find this true life, we must renounce 
the double-hearted life of pride and sensuality ; we 
must die to the life which we know, to find the life 
we know not. But how are we so to die ? What 
is the secret of this art? Grignon de Montfort 
explains it : 

' ' To pass from one life to another, or to die re- 
quires a starting point; we must have, as it were, 
a foot-hold in the second, to be able to quit the 
first. Here then is the well-spring of thy new 
life ; it is the Blessed Virgin in the centre of thy 
soul, in that centre from which thou absentest thy- 
self. Thou abidest and livest in those evil vor- 
tices, far from the virginal point in the midst 
where God would have His dwelling-place in thee ; 
enter into thyself again, come into the midst of thy 



MEDITATION XIII. 



155 



soul, by recollection and self-denial. Yield to the 
inner working of God, by the intercession of His 
holy Mother, and this working will draw the vor- 
tices of the soul towards the centre, and will purify 
them by drawing them together, and will draw 
them together by purifying them, and thus from 
day to day, will renew thy soul in simplicity, in 
proportion as, like St. Paul, thou diest daily." 

But once more ; what is the secret of this death ? 
What must we do, thus to die? 

4 'It consists," says Montfort, "in giving our- 
selves wholly to the Blessed Virgin, so as to be 
wholly Christ's through her ; we must give her 
our body, with all its senses and members, our soul 
with all its powers, our worldly goods, present and 
to come, our spiritual goods, that is our merits, 
our virtues, and Oitr good works, past, present, 
and to come, without the least reservation, and 
for eternity. 

4 ' This is voluntary consecration and self-sacrifice 
to Christ, through the Blessed Virgin, by an act, 
which is a perfect renewal of our baptismal vow. 
Now baptism, says St. Paul, buries us with Christ 
in death. Complete self-denial is the voluntary 
death which God demands, and of which Jesus has 
said, 4 Unless a man denies himself and carries his 
cross, he cannot be my disciple;' and again, 
'Unless a man forsakes all he has, he cannot be 
my disciple;' and again, 4 A grain of wheat cast 
into the earth, unless it die, remains alone, but if 
it dies, it hears much fruit, and becomes an ear. '" 

So the grand secret of passing to another life, 
by that recollection in which God communicates 
himself to the soul, is to give ourselves to Christ 



156 



MEDITATION XXIII. 



who is in the midst of us, through the Virgin who 
is at the centre of our souls. 

But these same things may be otherwise illus- 
trated. Bossuet speaks of the secret way that 
leads to the gate of heaven, that is to thee, holy 
Virgin, and calls it a "gate which, though open 
to the saints since the first ages of the Church, is 
still, perhaps, insufficiently understood by the 
learned; 7 ' and he prays God, "that we may all 
become like little children, as Christ commands, 
and so may enter this gate, that we may be able 
to point it out to others more surely and more 
efficaciously." 

And what is this gate, or rather, how do we 
approach it ? For every Christian knows who the 
gate of heaven is. It is the Virgin Mother of 
God. But by what act do we approach her? 
By true simplicity, says Bossuet, by self-denial. 
"True simplicity," says he, "causes us to live in 
continual death, and perfect detachment; it can 
only be obtained by a perfect purity of heart, by 
a true mortification and contempt of self. He who 
shrinks from suffering and humiliation, and from 
dieing to self, shall never enter there: this is why 
there are so few who travel far that road, because 
scarcely any one will go out of himself, for want 
}f which we lose immensely, and deprive ourselves 
")f unimaginable good." 

For want of the will to abandon ourselves, we 
remain in the double vortex of concupiscence, in 
the pride of Adam, an$ the false desires of Eve. 
and never reach the centre, the unity, the sim- 
plicity where the Virgin is found in whom God 
dwells. 



MEDITATION XXIII. 



157 



Bossuet continues : 1 ' Teach me to perform this 
act, my God, this act so vast, yet so simple, 
which makes over to Thee all that I am, which 
unites me to all that Thou art. Jesus, I lie at 
Thy feet, let me find this one thing necessary. 
Thou already knowest, Christian soul, Jesus 
whispers to thy heart, that this is the true act of 
self-denial, for it makes over the whole man to God, 
his soul, his body, his feelings, his desires, all his 
limbs, all his veins with all the blood in them, all 
is made over to Thee, Jesus, do with it what- 
ever Thou wilt." 

Can we believe that the fervent prayer of a soul 
which thus gives itself wholly to God with full 
freedom, which offers itself and all it has to God 
through Christ, to Christ through His Mother — 
can we believe that a prayer like this will be in 
vain, that an offering like this will be despised? 
Who is it moves us to pray, but God? Who gives 
Himself first, if it be not the incarnate God, God 
earned in His Mother's arms, and coming into the 
midst of the world, and into the midst of the soul, 
where, for so many days, years and ages, He waits 
patiently for each soul, and for the whole world? 

Here we have a secret, which has ever been too 
closely kept, though the Church has never ceased 
to proclaim it ; a specific to enable us to pass from 
earth to heaven, from our evil and divided life, 
to a holy and simple life. Here we have the 
means of removing the obstacle, of conquering our 
double heart, of reuniting our forces which the 
perversity of our pride and sensuality had kept 
apart, and had separated from God. This great 
act replaces us in the sanctuary where the bright- 



/ 



158 



MEDITATION XXIII. 



ness of God's presence shines as in a burning glass, 
to kindle the flames of knowledge and holiness, 
that they may spread through the world from the 
focus of the soul, that has thus become Mother of 
God. 

And what is this act, but perfect love, which, 
as St. John says, casts out fear? 

All obstacles disappear before this act, which 
includes as its consequences the whole force of 
contrition, and of the sacrament of penance, the 
desire of which it implies. 

This is the mystery of the soul's progress. 

that we might know that an ever increasing 
number of souls would enter on this road of pro- 
gress, and would practice this law of life. Perhaps, 
holy Virgin, Gate of Heaven, if our understand- 
ing knew it better, our will would submit to it 
more easily. Perhaps if we knew what Christian 
death is, and what is the fruit of complete self- 
abnegation in thee and in Christ, if we knew that 
light, joy, peace, increase of life, and all the gifts 
of the Holy Ghost, are its fruits, if we knew that 
this self-denial is to lose misery and to gain the 
infinite, if we could look into the depths of the 
mystery, and there see the necessary steps of the 
progress of life, the wonderful approach of the soul 
to God, and the change from temporal to eternal 
life ; if we knew that the deepest mysteries of wis- 
dom and knowledge are hidden, like treasures, in 
the practice of this holy law ; if we knew how short 
is this path from earth to heaven, how near in this 
direction heaven is to earth, how its sweet influ- 
ences secretly embrace the earth, even in this life, 



MEDITATION XXIV. 



159 



for all those who seek them through thee, Gate 
of Heaven, then, I say, perhaps more men would 
turn in this direction, would draw heaven down, 
and would hasten the coming of the kingdom of 
God, which is the doing of God's will on earth as 
it is done in heaven. 



MEDITATION XXIV. 

Mary our Mother, pray for us. 

Mary our Mother, Mother of the elect, and 
Mother of mankind, pray that we may penetrate 
deeper and deeper into the mystery of this ma- 
ternity. Show us how thou hast brought us forth 
to life, and how we may deserve to be called and 
to be thy children. 

In the order of redemption there are in God 
two degrees of paternity ; that by which He causes 
His only Son, the God-Man, to be born of the 
Virgin, and that by which He adopts mankind in 
Christ, to be brethren and co-heirs of J esus. We 
find the same degrees of maternity in the Blessed 
Virgin; she also is by nature, true Mother of the 
only Son of God, the God-Man, and besides, she 
is Mother by adoption of all mankind, and espe- 
cially of all the elect. 

How and when did the Virgin Mary become 
Mother of Christ? It was when the angel saluted 
her, and said : ' ' Blessed is the fruit of thy womb." 
At that instant, the only Son of God, was con- 
ceived in her, by the Holy Ghost. Let us never 



160 



MEDITATION XXIT. 



be tired of repeating that it was her absolutely 
stainless purity, which was, on the human side, 
the principle of the incarnation. It was, says 
St. Chrysostoru, because the Virgin was chaste in 
a degree far above human nature that she con- 
ceived in her womb the Lord Jesus Christ. There 
is a mutual relation between her divine maternity 
and her immaculate purity. 

And when and how did Mary become our 
Mother? Mary brought forth all her adopted 
children in the midst of the sorrows of Calvary, 
when Jesus said to her from His cross, 1 1 Woman 
behold thy Son." and to St. John, "Behold thy 
Mother." All the Fathers of the Church acknowl- 
edge that these words were addressed through St. 
John to all the elect ; and many theologians affirm 
that the cry, ""Woman, behold thy Son," was the 
creative word through which all the elect were 
bom of Mary to God, through adoption, but 
through a real and efficacious adoption. St. Peter 
Dainian says,1:hat it was as almighty in its work- 
ing as the word which consecrates the bread and 
wine, and makes them the body and blood of 
Jesus. 

Mankind, the offspring of the ground, were the 
bread and the wine; by the words, "Behold thy 
Son," Jesus consecrates them, and transforms 
this worthless bread and wine into His own breth- 
ren, and true children of Mary. Or rather, He 
makes them into His own mystical body and blood, 
for as Origen well remarks, "Jesus said not, 
'this is also thy Son,' but 'this is thy Son;' and 
He meant, 'this man, this adopted Son, is the 
same Jesus whom thou didst bring forth.' " For 



MEDITATION XXIV. 



161 



the elect of God should be able to say with St. 
Paul: 4 'It is no longer I that live, but Jesus 
Christ who liveth in me." For Jesus has made 
us members of His own body, and sharers in His 
divine nature, by collecting us all into a single 
body, which is His. 

At that solemn moment mankind was conse- 
crated, and the sons of Adam, the offspring of the 
ground, became children of God. At that mo- 
ment, the author of the new creation blessed 
mankind, created anew in Jesus Christ, and in 
Mary, the second Eve, and said to them; "In- 
crease and multiply." At that moment, the 
supernatural and more creative work, which not 
only renews, but also raises the creature from the 
natural to the supernatural order, which makes 
nature transcend itself, and translates it into God's 
infinity — at that moment, the eternal work, the 
eternal sacrifice, of which the daily sacrifice of 
the altar is the continuation, was accomplished. 

Of all epochs this was the most solemn. 

At that moment God gave his only Son for the 
salvation of the world ; at that hour the word was 
fulfilled, "God so loved the world, that He gave 
His only Son." At that hour the Virgin, freely 
participating in the sacrifice, offered up more than 
her own life, and the Fathers have applied to her 
that which Jesus said of God : ' ' She so loved the 
world that she gave her only Son." At that hour 
Mary, united to Jesus the High Priest, shared 
His priesthood, and accepted and offered up her 
sorrows. And these sorrows are the pains of our 
birth. ' ' According to St. Bernardine, of Sienna," 
says a learned author, "It is certain that Mary, 



162 



MEDITATION XXIV. 



by her loving co-operation with the mystery of the 
redemption, truly brought us forth to the light 
of grace on Calvary; and that in the order of sal- 
vation, the sorrows of Mary, in conjunction with 
the love of the eternal Father and the passion of 
his Son, have given birth to all of us, so that in 
those precious moments Mary became in the fullest 
sense our Mother, by the immensity of her love, 
and the generosity of her martyrdom. 

' ' At that moment the Virgin conceived for the 
second time, by the power of the word of God, 
when Jesus pronounced those mysterious words : 
' TToman, behold thy Son.' Mary then felt her 
bowels yearn, and her heart expand towards the 
Church, with all the tenderness of a Mother's love. 

And as for the incarnation of Christ, God re- 
quired the consent of human nature in the person 
of Mary, so also for this second birth of the Word 
in his elect God again required her full consent. 
She is the Mother of the elect, the Mother of 
mankind, for she willingly bore all the pain of 
this agonizing birth; she had to sacrifice her only 
Son that He might be no longer her only one, 
and that His word might be fulfilled; "Unless 
the grain of corn is cast into the earth, and dies, 
it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much 
fruit." By freely and fully accepting death for 
her Son and herself — a sacrifice, which, after that 
of Christ, is the most wonderful that a human soul 
ever made — she deserved to become the multi- 
plier of the corn, and to realize the word of the 
prophet : "Thy womb is a heap of corn." 

As for St. John, the representative of all these 
new children, he was the first to enter on this in- 



MEDITATION XXIV. 



163 



heritanee, says St. Cyril, and to become son of 
God and of Mary, through his virginity, and 
through his remaining close to the cross. Vir- 
ginity watchtng the cross and dying on the cross, 
or sacrifice, is the cause of men becoming chil- 
dren of God. 

When will mankind and Christians come to un- 
derstand the supernatural fecundity of a sacrifice? 
When shall we see in sacrifice, and in the cross, 
which is its Christian sign — I do not mean in the 
bleeding victim, which is the form of sacrifice in 
this valley of tears, but in the pure idea of sacri- 
fice — the supreme and universal law of life, or 
rather the pulsation and growth of life in God ? 
As on a spring morning we may see the plants 
growing beneath our eyes by the electrical influ- 
ence from above: as we see their delicate veins 
alternately expanding and contracting with the 
pulsation of the spirit of nature which develops 
them, and as these two movements are as neces- 
sary to their growth as the two movements of our 
heart to our life ; as it is true that nothing can be 
increased without being first contracted, nothing 
raised without being first brought low, and that 
no one, as our Saviour says, can find life without 
first consenting to lose it — as it is true 'that we 
can only enter into God's infinity by going out of 
ourselves, and annihilating ourselves in His pres- 
ence; as this great law applies not only to the 
life and growth of bodies, not only to the life and 
growth of souls, but to the life of the understand- 
ing and thought, let us hope that some day, and 
that soon, the idea of sacrifice may penetrate the 
mind of man, through Mary our Mother standing 



164 



MEDITATION XXIT. 



in the presence of Jesus on the cross, and open 
new realms to science, and to the soul, heart, and 
courage of man a new era of self-immolation. 

The imitation of Mary is the necessary pre- 
liminary of the imitation of Jesus, and this will 
be its triumph. When the knowledge of thee, 
Mother of mankind, and the imitation of thee, 
come to abound in the Church, they will cause 
virginity and watching by the cross to abound 
amongst men, and will bind them faster to thee. 
And by these two things, which are at bottom but 
one, we shall merit to have thee more and more 
for our Mother, and Jesus for our brother. Uni- 
ted to thee upon Calvary we shall consent more 
easily to death. Knowing what death is, we shall 
escape the slavery which St. Paul speaks of under 
which the fear of death holds us during our life. 
TTe shall be free. Instead of trembling and 
crouching for fear, we shall stand upright; we 
shall hold up our heads towards heaven, and shall 
rejoice in a sacrifice which glorifies God and pro- 
motes the unity of mankind. TVe shall be breth- 
ren in thee, Mother, and in Jesus our uncre- 
ated Brother ; we shall be members of one body, 
and by this sacrifice we shall unite ourselves in one 
bread and in one wine, like grains of corn ground 
together, or grapes trodden together in the wine- 
press. This bread and wine shall be consecrated 
into the holy bread and new wine of the kingdom 
of God, where we shall learn that life is, on man's 
side, a continual offering, a perpetual sacrifice of 
self, answered on God's side by a torrent of 
eternal glory. 



165 



MEDITATION XXV. 

Health of the weak, pray for us. 

Teach us, then, Mary, what is that ineffable 
good which we lose when we refuse to come to thee, 
by complete self-abnegation; and what are the 
treasures of life, of joy, of light, of happiness, 
which we might expect even in this life, if we died 
to ourselves, and gave ourselves to thee, and found 
thee, Gate of Heaven. 

And first, to begin with the smallest things; 
what corporal blessings might we not obtain in thy 
service, Health of the weak. 

The principal prayer which the Church offers to 
God, through the Virgin, and which we may call 
the prayer of the Virgin is, "Grant, God, to 
us Thy servants, the grace of health in mind and 
body, and by the glorious intercession of the Bless- 
ed Mary, ever "Virgin, deliver us from present 
sadness and grant us eternal joy." 

If we but understood this prayer, and knew 
what is the health that God gives. But no, we 
neglect our bodies, as we do all the rest. We 
have not sufficient fortitude to preserve our bodies, 
which yet we prize so highly. We are enslaved 
to the vices which destroy them. 'We do not die, 
but kill ourselves. We waste our life, our strength, 
and our beauty, and bequeath an impaired con- 
stitution to our children. Our present sin inflicts 
numberless wounds on our body. Our passion? 
visibly degrade it, and yet men of science refuse 
to acknowledge the cause of the evil. They 



166 



MEDITATION XXT. 



attribute our infirmities and illnesses to all causes 
but the first and chief, and they seek the remedy 
anywhere except in the true well-spring of life. 

Will the time never come, Health of the weal:, 
when the sick shall have recourse through thee to 
the fountain of life, and when those who are strong 
shall commit their strength to thee, that thou may- 
est guard it and renew it at its fountain-head? 
What do our teachers tell us of this secret of the 
worship of Mary, this touching and efficacious 
practice of giving ourselves entirely to Mary? 
Give, they say, to her who is the health of the 
weak, thy body, with all its senses and its mem- 
bers. Bossuet says of the act which regenerates 
the whole man, that it 1 ' gives up to God the whole 
man, soul and body, thoughts, sentiments, desires, 
all his limbs, all his veins, with all the blood which 
they contain, all his nerves to their smallest rami- 
fications, all his bones, and the very marrow in 
the midst of them." 

But if this act so fully offers the whole body to 
God, can we suppose that God will refuse to bless 
it, and to renew it in the first principles of its life? 

Let those who are sick and infirm try with full 
faith to offer their body to God through Mary, by 
reciting the prayer of the Virgin, let them offer 
their body without reserve, either for life or death, 
for suffering or for health ; let them offer it entirely, 
and in detail as minute as Bossuet describes; let 
them somehow concentrate by some strong effort 
of prayer all these details of their body into its 
centre, which is the heart, and then offer to God for 
His blessing, and for the inspiration of His Holy 
Spirit, their natural in union with their spiritual 



MEDITATION XXV. 



1G7 



heart. Let them seek in a burst of enthusiasm to 
unite for an instant their body and their soul 
with God ; let them attempt to make this offering 
during their morning sacrifice ; it is not too much 
to declare that a number of sick persons, whom 
nothing else would cure, will find their health in 
thus offering their whole body to God, through 
her who is the Health of the weak. 

Not to speak of the sudden and miraculous cures 
which certainly occur from time to time, when will 
our would-be men of science begin to reckon the 
soul among the forces which act upon the body? 
When will they come to know that if the soul, 
when separated from God by sin, is a spent force, 
a force cut off from the well-spring of its power ; 
when united to God it becomes, on the contrary, a 
mighty stream, a river of life, which penetrates 
the whole body, even to the marrow of the bones? 
You see full well that if we wish to overcome the 
inertia of matter, space or distance, the forces 
which we must use are not solid matter, like iron 
or brass, but heat and electricity, and yet you can- 
not understand that to maintain the life of the 
living body, the principal force is God, is prayer, 
is the soul. 

If this is the case in the purely natural order of 
bodily forces, how will it be with the Christian, 
nourished with the sacraments of God? with the 
Christian to whom thou comest, Mary, when 
Christ gives to our bodies His Flesh, His Blood, 
and His Divinity? Thou didst give this life-giving 
flesh to the Incarnate "Word, and therefore thou 
art the health of the sick. The last prayer of the 
priest, before he communicates at Mass, is: " Let 



168 



MEDITATION XXV. 



not the participation of Thy body, Lord Jesns 
Christ, which I, unworthy, presume to receive, 
turn to my judgment and condemnation; but 
through Thy goodness may it be to me a safeguard 
and remedy, both of soul and body." 

Believers may ask why this life-giving flesh, 
taken and eaten, does not oftener heal the body 
as well as the soul; is it not because man too 
seldom answers the two questions which Christ 
asks of those whom He would heal : * ' Canst thou 
believe?" and " Wilt thou be healed?" Believers 
in the real presence will understand how, if faith 
was more lively, the flesh of Christ would much 
oftener work out the commission of J esus to His 
disciples "Go heal the sick, and raise the dead 
to life." 

If we but knew what an Almighty helper, that 
man bears within him, who eats the flesh of Christ, 
and drinks that immaculate and life-giving blood, 
which is thine, Mary, Mother of God, as well 
as Christ's; if we but knew the mystery of regen- 
eration, the bodily resurrection which is wrought 
in this man, by the Virgin who conceives God, 
and by God conceived m Mary, and dwelling in 
the centre of the man's soul. I would scarcely 
venture to say so much, had not Bossuet led the 
way — 4 4 If I tell you that Jesus rising from the 
sepulchre is a pledge of our resurrection, I shall 
only tell you a truth which every Christian knows ; 
but if I add that this great and divine work is 
already begun in our mortal bodies, you will per- 
haps wonder, and will find it hard to understand, 
how in our corruptible bodies, God is already 
carrying on the work of their blessed immortality. 



MEDITATION XXV. 



169 



''Hearken, dust and ashes, and be glad in the 
Lord; whilst this mortal body is crushed with 
weakness and infirmity, God is already sowing in 
it the seeds of an unchangeable existence, whilst 
it is growing old, God is renewing it, whilst it is 
daily exposed to dangerous illness, and to certain 
death, the Holy Ghost is providing for its glorious 
resurrection." 

Is not this St. Paul's meaning in that wonder- 
ful text : 1 4 Glorify God, and carry God in your 
bodies?" 

Here is the hope of the poor sufferer from 
tedious illness; in the depths of his being, among 
the very roots of his soul and body, God, by His 
Holy Ghost, is sowing the seeds of the resurrection 
of his body, and is beginning the work of his 
blessed and unchangeable immortality. All this is 
being wrought in him by the power and the blood 
of Him who is the second Adam, the cause of our 
life, as the first Adam is the cause of our death. 
Whilst sickness and death, the work of the first 
Adam, is going on within us, the second and life- 
giving Adam is beginning His work. The second 
Eve, Mother of life, is working within us ; already 
the seeds of an unchangeable existence are ger- 
minating in our bodies. Here is enough, and 
infinitely more than enough to heal us even in this 
life, if we will be healed, if we can believe, and 
if the health of our body would be for the good of 
our soul. Otherwise the work of the first Adam 
will go on to its end. Still, beneath this dying 
flesh there are the seeds of immortality ; there is 
a new man in our bosom, like a babe in the womb 
of its mother, and at the moment of our seeming 



170 



MEDITATION XXV. 



death, this new man will shake off his shackles to 
live for ever. 

Who can tell whether some day the increase of 
divine faith and the universal diffusion of a greater 
love of God, and of the pure Mother, by whom He 
deigned to come into the world, the Mother of life, 
and the health of the weak, will not draw down 
from God, for future generations, a fuller life, a 
more robust health of soul and body ; and whether 
men will not find the principal support of life in a 
lively faith, in prayer and the sacraments, and in 
the holy unction which was established for the 
body .as well as for the soul? 

Who can tell whether these holy powers, when 
received and digested by the virtue which Mary 
gives; by humility, which replaces its life in its 
true centre; by chastity, which curbs, elevates, 
and transfigures its powers; by chastity, which 
renews it as its source, and sends forth its cleansing 
and life-giving heat, who knows whether all these 
virginal powers will not bring to pass that epoch 
of the world, which was foretold by a great saint: 
* ' When there shall be but one science of soul and 
of body, because the two shall live the same life?" 

Mary, Health of the weak, pray for thy ser- 
vants. Grant us, Jesus, the virginal virtues ; by 
means of them heal our infirmities, whether of soul 
or body ; deliver us from the sombre sadness of the 
present world, and grant us the first fruits of 
eternal joy. 

Lord, I will from henceforth try to rule my 
body with more prudence than I have done hitherto. 
I know what a fool I have been ; I have indulged 
my sensuality instead of curbing it; I have not 



MEDITATION XXVI. 



171 



imposed on my body the law of sacrifice, And that 
which Thou hast said of the life of the soul, has 
proved true of the life of my body. "He who 
will keep his life, shall lose it, and he who consents 
to lose it, shall find it." Fasting and prayer would 
often have killed the seeds of disease, which I 
fostered by dieting them ; the more I nursed my 
body, the more weak, feeble, and rebellious it 
became. The more I would preserve my life the 
farther it runs away; the selfishness of the body 
is its ruin. The body, given up to the inclination 
of its flesh, overloads itself with foreign matter, 
surcharges itself, as the Scripture says, and 
accumulates in itself a clogged life, which the 
sacred text calls 1 ' a thick mud." If I had denied 
my body, if I had let it suffer for a time, I should 
have preserved its strength. I will be wiser for 
the future. With all my heart I will renounce 
my life, and even place it in thy hands, Health 
of the weak, that thou mayst offer it to God, who 
is its well-spring, who alone can renew it, can 
regenerate it, can fit it for eternity. I will no 
more devote to myself the life of my body, and so 
make it more and more earthly and corruptible ; 
but I will more and more devote it to God, ta 
make it incorruptible and heavenly. 



MEDITATION XXVI. 

Seat of wisdom, pray for us ! 

If thou thus blessest our body, beloved pro- 
tectress of mankind, how shall it be with our soul, 



172 



MEDITATION XXVI. 



when thou deignest by thy virtues to maintain it, 
and practice it in the works of light ? 

Humility, chastity, charity! What a fund for 
the future light and knowledge of man ! Seat 
of wisdom, pray for us, that we may escape from 
our darkness, our quarrels, our parties, our child- 
ish inconstancy, and our barbarous ignorance, and 
may attain to light and peace, the peace of the 
wisdom and the knowledge of God. 

"We must know," says a pious and profound 
writer, ' 1 that there are three kinds of science ; 
the first is merely human, the second, purely 
divine, and the third both divine and human. The 
science of the pagans was merely human, for they 
started from human principles, and depended only 
on their own efforts. Their study had no other 
than a natural end; such as the satisfaction of 
their own mind, the desire of their own perfection, 
or the honor and praise of men. There are but 
too many Christians who study in the same way. 

44 The purely divine and infused science, is one 
of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and has been 
granted to the apostles and a multitude of other 
saints. 

"The third, is both human and divine, and is 
the real and true science of Christians, and that 
of which the wise man speaks when he says ; 1 God 
gave him the science of the saints, and completed 
his labors.' This is infused, but not without 
labor; it is both infused and acquired." 

The science which we pray thee to obtain for 
ns, Mary, Seat of wisdom, who hast given the 
eternal Light to the world, is this true science of 
Christians; a science that is conformed to thy 
Son, who is both God and man, a science that 



MEDITATION XXVI. 



173 



proceeds both from God and from man — from 
God, who inspires it by His light and His grace, 
and from man, who works and prays, who searches 
and profoundly meditates with the help of God's 
light and inspiration. 

All the great doctors of the Church, and the 
theologians of the first rank, have had this kind 
of science, which has been sometimes also granted 
to women in the seclusion of their convents. 

Never, perhaps, has anything more admirable 
been written on the divine aspect of the true 
science, and on the practical methods of obtaining it, 
than the following noble exhortation of a holy wo- 
man who was favored with the inspiration of God: 

"You, my people, whose religion is without 
guile, who have fixed your hearts on the aim of 
overcoming the world, and of bearing heaven 
within you, turn not back, persevere in the way 
of vision which you have chosen, and purify your 
eyes that you may be able to raise them to the 
contemplation of the light, where your Life and 
your Redeemer dwelleth. This is the way to 
purify the eye of the heart, and to give it power to 
raise itself to the true light— to despise the cares 
of the world, to mortify the body, to have a con- 
trite heart, to make pure and frequent confession 
of every sin, and to wash it away with tears. And 
after cleansing away all impurity, this is the way 
to lift up the eyes, to meditate on the unspeakable 
essence of God, and His awful purity and truth; 
to pray forcibly and simply, to rejoice in God, and 
to desire His kingdom. Adopt this for your con- 
stant work and press on towards the light which 
God offers you as His children, and which comes 
down spontaneously into your hearts . Take your 



174 



MEDITATION XXVI. 



hearts in your hands, and offer them to Him who 
speaks to you, and He will fill tfyem with a glory 
that shall make them partakers of the divine 
nature, and you shall be children of the light, and 
angels of God. 

4 'Children of Adam, does it seem to you a 
small thing to become children of God? Why, 
then, turn away your faces from Him who giveth 
such power to men; you, especially, who have 
determined to dwell peaceably in this world, and to 
live like angels on the earth? You are burning 
lights, whom the Master has placed on a hill to 
enlighten mankind, by your words and your exam- 
ples, take heed lest pride and covetousness quench 
the light. Children of peace, stop your ears to 
the noise of the world, and make a deep silence 
within you, that you may listen to the Spirit who 
speaks to your heart." 

Besides these religious efforts to obtain the 
divine part of science, you must employ the severe 
and persevering labor of a life. The patient and 
comparative study of the mysteries of visible 
nature, the lessons of history, the grand tradition 
of the human mind, and especially the divine tra- 
dition of the Church, will ripen towards the 
autumn of your life into a science which is certainly 
better than the world can give. 

Perhaps, Mother of light, Seat of wisdom, 
if Christians give themselves to thee by practicing 
thy virtues more abundantly, then mankind to- 
wards the autumn of its history will attain to a 
knowledge more high, more wide, more deep, 
than it has yet been able to reach. 

Many saints have possessed the purely divine 
science; many pagans have possessed something 



MEDITATION XXVI. 



175 



of human science; Christians, not without the 
visible influence of the light and grace of Christ, 
have wonderfully developed human science ; but 
the science which is at once divine and human, 
which extends to the universality of truths, has 
not yet developed. We find its germ in the the- 
ology of the greatest doctors, but this germ, 
though full of hidden life, has never yet been 
sufficiently nourished with material food, with the 
elements of the visible world. The time is 
coming when this inferior subject matter of 
science will be better prepared, and will be open to 
the insight of the mind, and perhaps will be sub- 
dued and penetrated by the superior element of 
science. 

But where shall we find a mind capable of 
taking in this whole, at once divine and human? 
Where shall we find a body chaste enough to 
endure the work, a mind large enough to embrace 
the whole, and humble enough to investigate 
every petty detail, and a heart warm enough to 
give it the consecration of love? Mary, thy 
servants only for whom thou hast obtained thy 
virtues of humility, chastity, and charity, will be 
able to receive this science at once divine and 
human, the science of the age to come, of the 
kingdom of God upon earth. Some day, perhaps, 
education will not be so confined to the human 
side of science, to those dry and technical lessons, 
which are, as it were, external fomentations 
applied to the brain and memory of the child. 

Perhaps the child Jesus, who requires of us a 
different education for His childhood, will teach 
us, through Thee, to discover the holy germ which 
is laid up in the child's soul; perchance, when the 



176 



MEDITATION XXVI. 



child questions us about the voices he hears in his 
heart, about those mysterious and deep whisper- 
ings which arouse him and call him, about those 
distant glimpses of light which he fancies he sees 
in the heaven of his soul — perchance, we shall 
learn to do more than answer him, like the High 
Priest Heli: " It is nothing, go to sleep again." 
Perchance, we shall feel that we had better open 
our eyes, as the high priest did at last with the 
child Samuel, and like him, tell the child, who 
does not yet know the secret voice of God, " Go, 
and if you are called again, say to God: Speak, 
Lord, for Thy servant heareth." 

Mary, Queen and Mother of children, suffer 
not the world, with its shallow wisdom, its dull- 
ness and its jeers, to quench in the souls of chil- 
dren the germ of true science, the source of 
divine wisdom, the light of inspiration. Rather 
let the voice of their teachers inspired with thy 
maternal spirit, Mother of Christians, make 
these souls yet unfolded, these understandings yet 
in the bud, realize the words which the Holy 
Ghost speaks to them; 4 'Listen to me, ye seed 
of God, grow up like the rose tree planted by the 
water's side, give forth your flowers and your per- 
fumes like the lily, put forth your branches of 
grace, and learn to praise God, and to bless Him 
in all His works." 

Perchance, Mary, thou wilt obtain for us the 
knowledge how to prepare the child's mind to 
receive in due time knowledge and wisdom. 

1 have been as blind to the interests of my mind 
as to those of my body, my God. So far from 
seeking my mind's life, first in Thee, then in my 



MEDITATION XXVI, 



177 



soul, then in nature, I have inverted the whole 
order. I have recognized no means of learning 
but books, as I have recognized no means of 
strengthening my body but material food, without 
sufficiently considering the influences of the air, 
and of the spirit of nature; and still less, the 
fluences of the soul, and the mighty power of God, 
that comes to me by prayer. In the same way, 
I have known no food for my mind, but that which 
my hands can touch and my eyes take in, books, 
and nature. I have not learnt to question my 
soul, still less to question God; if I had an insight 
into my soul, and into God, without neglecting 
the books through which other men speak to me, 
then I should understand the meaning of the 
books, and should read them in the spirit that 
dictated them, rather than in the letters which 
compose the words and syllables which I labori- 
ously spell over, and find but a meagre outline of 
the living thought they represent. 

But, God, why have I no insight into my 
soul, and into Thee? 

Because the soul must be pure, humble, chaste, 
and recollected, in order to be the mirror of God. 
For it is written : * 1 Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall see God." 

If I had thy virtues, then, Mary, I should 
behold the light face to face; I should renew the 
life of my mind at its highest source. 

Therefore, Mother immaculate, I will give 
thee my mind as well as my body, that thou 
mayst offer me wholly, mind and body, to God. 



178 



MEDITATION XXVII. 

Mother most amiable, and Mother of pure love, pray for us. 

Mother most amiable, and Mother of pure love, 
pray for us, obtain for us a heart to love thee, to 
praise thee and to thank thee worthily for all the 
benefits which God bestows on the world through 
thee, and for those which He is reserving for the 
latter days of mankind upon earth. 

By the spread of thy worship, and of the imita- 
tion, knowledge, and love of thee, we may yet 
hope for great improvements in the world, and for 
unspeakable benefits. But there is one improve- 
ment, one benefit that is greater than all, because it 
includes all, and this, Mother of love, is the pro- 
gress and spread of the love which thou givest. 
What would be the use of a progress of knowledge 
among men, without a still greater progress of love ? 

" Love," says St. Francis of Sales, " is a word 
that is misused and degraded, but it must be kept, 
for it is a word of incomparable beauty." 

If all the law and the prophets are reduced to 
a single commandment : "To love God above all 
things, and thy neighbor as thyself, for the love 
of God." If St. Paul keeps ever saying to us : 
* ' Love is the fulfilling of the law ; the law is ful- 
filled in one saying, love thy neighbor." If St. 
Augustine says, "Love and then do what you 
like," we can see why St. John, the apostle of 
love, the first-born of the adopted children of Mary, 
in his old age, did but repeat one thing: "My 
children, love one another, for this is the command- 
ment of the Lord, and this by itself is enough." 

But, Mary, spotless and ever immaculate 



MEDITATION XXVII 



179 



Virgin, who art, therefore, all lovely and Mother 
of pure love, look whether in the midst of our 
wickedness and deformity we are worthy of being 
beloved, or able to love. Thou, because thou art 
immaculate, art all beautiful; if the spot of sin, 
if only the fuel of sin had been in thee but a single 
instant, even in thy mother's womb, thou wouldst 
have retained some trace of its deformity ; thy soul 
would have had its combats, not only against out- 
ward evil, but against that which is within, and 
these combats would have written their wrinkles 
on thy brow. But the Scripture says, thou art all 
beautiful, without spot or wrinkle ; but we, behold, 
we are all ingrained with spots and deformities ; 
if we did but know what a deformity is sin, how 
destructive of love is wickedness ! 

Because thou art all fair before God, and because 
thou art truly the Mother of pure love, I know by 
an infallible reasoning, that thou wast ever immacu- 
late, and hadst no part even in Adam's sin. And 
because the dogma of the Immaculate Conception 
is springing up from its old roots, is growing high, 
spreading its branches, and putting forth its match- 
less blossoms and its wonderful fruits, we may 
believe that the earth and mankind will become 
more beautiful, and men more capable, and more 
worthy of love. 

amiable and admirable Mother, behold, I 
beseech thee, our deformities, and take pity at the 
sorry sight. 

Behold our childhood sensualized, our youth 
corrupted, our manhood effete, our old age dried 
up before its time; behold the face of mankind, 
purple or else ashy pale with its passions, disfigured 
with the seven shapes of sin, and their companion 



180 



MEDITATION XXVII. 



trains of sickness and suffering ; behold these eyes 
dulled or dissipated, or ashamed, if not made still 
more frightful by pride, lust, hatred or malice; 
ah, how seldom do we find among men those placid 
eyes, soft, yet strong, that are the tokens of inno- 
cence never lost, or if lost, regained ! and when 
is it given to us to see those gracious inspired eyes 
of a soul which has an insight into God, and which 
beholds the world, nature, and men, in God ; eyes 
which are replete with all the rays of life, of 
courage, of strength, of goodness, and of truth, 
because they are like the soul, and the soul is like 
God? Does not the Sun of justice pour forth His 
rays and His beauties upon all souls? He sheds 
them, but we quench them all; we will not let 
our faces reflect the face of God as He would 
have them. Mother immaculate, the only per- 
fect beauty, who hast never quenched a single 
ray of God's light, who hast shed and still sheddest 
the eternal light upon the world, pray for us. And 
though we are not lovely, because we are hideous, 
yet at least, Mother of pure love, make us loving. 
Thy Son has given us commandment to love, not 
to be loved. And, Jesus and Mary, ye by 
loving us, by loving the lowest of mankind, the 
poorest, the weakest, the most leprous, and the 
most deformed, have shown us how to love those 
who are not lovely. Moreover, ye show us the 
way to do it, and this is, to love them in God. 

What is the meaning of loving things in God, but 
to look at them in God, to invest them with the 
beauty which they have in God, and which God 
seeks to give them, and will give them in His glory? 
Is it not certain that those who carry in their hearts 
some rays of God's light, and whose refined senses 



MEDITATION XXVII. 



181 



penetrate more easily through the body to the soul, 
through the soul to God — is it not true that hearts 
of this kind see through the human countenance and 
eye the character of the soul, and the ideal of beauty 
which it may realize in God ? Do they not feel an 
unutterable love for that which has such possibilities 
of beauty, and do they not leap for joy when they see 
a soul making a free and clear-sighted effort towards 
the realization of the model which God proposes to it ? 

amiable and admirable Mother, Mother of 
holy love, may we presume to say more? 

1 see everywhere in the world, and throughout 
history, that the progress of Christianity and of 
thy worship was ever followed by the progress of 
love, in every sense of the word. And surely, 
this progress begins low enough, for we see races 
which eat men's flesh, and which, in the drunken- 
ness of their brutal passions, lose all traces of love. 
How many men still live in this savage state? 

The civilized pagans are not cannibals, but they 
slay for their pleasure. Their festival enjoyment 
is in the bloody shows of gladiators, and it is im- 
possible to say how degraded and perverted their 
senses have become. 

As for the Christian ages, they vary according 
to their purity and their faithfulness to God ; but 
in comparison to infidels and savages, Christians 
are mildness and charity itself. 

This is the origin of that hearty and intelligent 
love of which St. Francis of Sales speaks. It 
exhibits traces of the eternal love which shall unite 
souls in God; as for example, the love of the same 
St. Francis, the apostle of kindness, towards that 
soul whose 1 ' vigorous heart " he somewhere praises. 
His love inspired her with the supernatural power 



182 



MEDITATION' XXVII. 



of giving birth to a new order in the Church. 
When he died, his love left her not, his eyes still 
watched his beloved sister; as she was dying he 
came to meet her, he was the angel whom God 
sent to receive her soul, and carry it to heaven. 
Mother of pure love, this is the kind of progress 
which the heart of man asks of thee, that heart, 
ill at ease and moaning, either for the privation 
or deprivation of love. Man's heart, so full of 
stains, is the old vessel of which Scripture speaks, 
wherein the wine of the new love cannot be kept 
without the wine fermenting and corrupting, the 
vessel bursting, and the wine being spilt. If 
none is put in, does it fare any better with the old 
vessel? It dries up, and shrivels, and cracks. 
Man's heart, then, must first learn to purify itself 
by giving itself to thee, immaculate Virgin, 
that it may be again worthy and capable of love. 

Thou art that matchless and ever new vessel 
wherein the wine remains without a shadow of 
corruption, because thou art immaculate from the 
first instant of thy being. Xever was there the 
least mixture of the old leaven in thee; for this 
thou wast made spouse of the Holy Ghost, and 
the Mother of eternal love. Therefore, Mother 
of immaculate love, who hast more love than all 
other creatures together, refresh us with some 
drops of that new wine, that new love, which men 
shall drink in the kingdom of heaven; teach thy 
adopted children, as thou didst teach St. John, 
teach us to love. Educate thy whole family, the 
Church, and extend it, if possible, to all mankind, 
educate it like St. John, that from age to age, 
and from year to year, it may be united and trans- 
figured in love. Increase in the Church the 



MEDITATION XXVII. 



183 



devotion of the Sacred Heart ; teach us to unite our 
hearts to that Heart, through thine ; and as the 
food which enters the blood of a man, enters it 
through the heart, which gives not life, but 
receives it, so teach us to enter into the Heart of 
Jesus, and to be incorporated with His blood and 
His life, through thee, Gate of Heaven, who 
art the human side of the Heart of J esus Christ. 

my God, why have I loved so much without 
Thee, instead of loving in Thee ? Like my body 
and my mind, my heart has made a mistake. It 
has loved for itself, instead of loving for Thee. 
It seeks love without, instead of within, and in 
Thee. 

Instead of loving Thee, I have loved Thy crea- 
tures ; instead of loving Thy creatures in Thee, I 
have loved them in themselves, and in the basest 
parts of their being. I have loved them for their 
vanity, and not for their worth, I have loved them 
for that which vanishes, not for that which en- 
dures; I have not the real love of mind and heart. 

if I had the holy love which God gives 
through thee, immaculate Mother, my heart 
would be no more empty or divided; it would 
not be empty, because I should love; it would 
not be divided, because I should have but one 
love. I should love Thee first, my God, and 
then I should love in Thee all that I loved with 
the love of the understanding and of the heart. 

All my love would then belong to my faith, to 
my religion and to my hopes of eternal life. 



184 



MEDITATION XXVIII. 

Mary, our abode, pray for us ! 

Jesus and Mary, it is not easy to forego the 
meditation of thy heart when we have once tasted 
its sweetness ; I say thy heart, Jesus and Mary, 
for ye have but one. As man's body has but one 
heart in two halves, so the kingdom of God has 
but one heart, the Catholic Church has but one. 

The medals which represent the hearts of Jesus 
and Mary, one crowned with thorns, leaning on 
the other pierced with swords, fall short of the 
truth. Your two hearts are not merely in contact, 
they not only support each other — they are but 
one, like the two sides of the heart of man. To 
understand how really they are one, we must call 
to mind those striking revelations that have been 
made to various saints, who have seen Jesus take 
their hearts and dip them into His own, so that 
only one heart was seen, though the two remained 
distinct — we must call to mind how St. Vincent 
of Paul declared that he saw the soul of St. Francis 
de Sales in the shape of a ball of fire, coming from 
heaven to meet the soul of St. Jane Chantal; and 
how her soul, which was rising in the shape of 
another, but smaller, fiery ball, mingled with the 
first, so that only one flame and one ball remained 
visible. 

Doubtless this beautiful sphere, this double star, 
ascended still higher, till it was united with the 
sovereign sun, the great centre of love, which is 
the heart of Christ, and that of His Mother, where 
the two sainted friends found their glory and their 
rest. Is not this the final consummation and the 



MEDITATION XXVIII. 



185 



chief good which every heart hopes for? Alas! 
now we are separated, we are lonely, we are scat- 
tered; the hearts and souls which God created to 
form a living city, to live one life, since the fall 
are scattered like the leaves in autumn that have 
fallen from the boughs, and are divided from the 
tree. Dead leaves, they may lie in heaps at the 
tree's foot, or fly in crowds with the windy gusts; 
but, however they may fly together, the sapless 
things can never again be one, and however thickly 
they may lie, they are nothing but a heap bf dung. 

1 ' Who," cried St. Augustine, "who will lay 
hold on me? Who will gather me from the midst 
of this dispersion? Who will re-unite me to the 
breast of our common mother, the holy city of 
heaven? mother, who will gather me to thee?" 
And the Church cries out to the holy Virgin in 
the name cf all God's children, "Holy Mother of 
God, we all dwell in thee, and we all leap for 
joy."* That is to say, our hearts and souls ought 
to have their dwelling in the heart and soul of the 
Mother of God, penetrated and enveloped as it is 
by the Word, and all His radiance, as the body 
of the sun is penetrated with light and heat, and 
enveloped with its rays. 

Yes, Lord, those who love know well what 
it is for soul to dwell within soul. Through Thee, 
who art simplicity itself, and in whom there is no 
division, all things may touch, and one soul may 
dwell in another; even here, mothers know, or 
might know, if they were as clear-sighted as they 
are loving-hearted, that after bearing their child 
in their womb, they bear its soul in their own 

*Sicut lsetantium omnium nostrum habitatio est in te } 
Sancta Dei G-enetrix. 



186 



5IEDITATI0N XXVIII. 



during its infancy and childhood, by a union 
which sometimes is never dissolved, or the dissolu- 
tion of which for many a mother is the loss of all 
joy, a desolation for which there is no cure but 
death. As for the Mother of God, our Mother, 
her heart is large enough for all men; its veins 
and its arteries extend to all the living. that 
this union might never be broken for any of us; 
that it might rather extend to those that are 
asleep, that it may draw us all closer, and that we 
may all at last find a home in this heart of the 
world, united to the heart of God in heaven! 

We are told that the visible heavens offer us a 
sort of figure and foreshadowing of these things 
in the grand order and laws of creation. At the 
present time worlds and suns are dispersed in space 
like atoms of dust; but, say some of our learned 
men, this dispersion will not go on forever. 
There is a common centre which attracts all things, 
and to which all created matter will one day be 
united. The earth and the planets, which travel 
through space, and which for thousands and thou- 
sands of years have been revolving round their 
brilliant sun, as a vessel might revolve round an 
island of light and fire — all these bodies, they 
say, will at some time be again joined to the sun, 
and the sun himself, gravitating towards a still 
larger centre, will there be absorbed. The forces 
which maintain the heavenly bodies in their course 
being shaken, as the Gospel expresses it, in God's 
own time, the stars shall fall from heaven > and 
shall go to build up the one paradise, in the centre 
of the universe, at the foot of the throne of God, 
at the feet of her who compasses the eternal sun, 
and who is crowned with stars. 



MEDITATION XXVIII, 



187 



Whatever may be said of this idea, nevertheless 
it is certain that at the end of all things, as St. 
Thomas, following St. Peter and the Prophet Isaias, 
says, the world shall be renewed, and the creation 
transformed by fire ; we shall be together in that 
place, of which our* Lord says: "I go to prepare 
a place for you;" we shall be in that great city, 
of which He says in another place : ' ' I will that 
where I am all they that love me may be likewise." 

Then shall be formed the new heavens and the 
new earth, which was announced by the Prince 
of the Apostles, and foretold by the prophets: an 
eternal world, where justice shall dwell, where 
there shall be no more tears, nor evil, nor death, 
because God will wipe away tears from every eye, 
because all hearts shall be united amongst each 
other, and with God, and thus everything shall 
be bound up in eternal love, and eternal and 
immutable perfection. 

when shall we come to this world of unity, 
where there shall be no more evil, nor fear of 
death, where God will wipe away the tears from 
all eyes, where we all shall be united together in 
God? 

Here we are all in disunion. The members of 
the human race are placed at such distances in 
time and space that the greater part will never see 
one another. Among those who live with me 
here below, how few have I ever looked at even 
once ! And those whom I do see, pass by, and I 
see them no more. I meet them on the road, I 
salute them, and this salutation is but an eternal 
farewell. In this way do the sons of Adam, who 
Jive at the sajne time, pass by each other in this 



188 



MEDITATION XXIX. 



life, without speaking, without knowing one 
another. And those who do know one another, 
who converse together, and believe that they live 
together, are often still further separated in mind 
and heart, than men who never see nor speak to 
each other. this cannot be our country ! This 
is not the mansion of the Father of the family. 
This is not the abode where those who love shall 
be united amongst themselves and with God. 
This is not the bosom of our heavenly Mother, 
where we are all to be gathered together. Let 
us pass on till we reach the place of repose. But 
let us walk towards our true end; let not the 
heart deceive itself and take a wrong road. One 
love alone leads us travellers to our country, to 
the abode of eternal love; it is that which loves 
all in God, and which gives itself to the immacu- 
late Mother, that it may be continually exalted 
and consecrated, till it is swallowed up in God. 



MEDITATION XXIX. 

Mary, our hope, pray for us. 

how slow are we to comprehend the meaning 
of these words of the Salve Regina: " Our life, 
our sweetness and our hope, all hail!" "Who un- 
derstands the full sense of these words: ' ' Mary 
our hope!" May we now, by the grace of God, 
meditate on them sufficiently to get a glimpse of 
their truth. 

What is hope? What is the meaning of this 
charming word ? What constitutes this powerful 
virtue ? 



MEDITATION XXIX. 



189 



Men think they know it, for they live on hope. 
No one dwells in the present, every one turns to 
the future, where he expects to see better days. 

We live not, we do but hope to live, as St. 
Paul says : 11 Every creature groans, as it waits." 
But how often are we deceived by vain hopes, 
which lead us astray here below ! Sometimes I 
hope for what I shall never obtain; sometimes I 
hope for that which will bring me no happiness. 
Do I then hope too much? Must I live without 
hope? that men knew that their hopes are 
vain, precisely because they hope too little ! They 
hope without energy, and they hope for too small 
a happiness. Hope abundantly, absolutely. Hope 
for the perfect possession of all possible good, and 
you will not be deceived. Hope, which is full 
and unwavering, is infallible. 

if we had a firm belief in this ! If we knew 
of a truth that hope which is absolute is infallible, 
that is to say, that the perfect assemblage of all 
possible good is a present reality, and that man, 
whatever he may be, can and ought to possess this 
full and sovereign beatitude ! 

Yes, my God, Creator of the world, and sancti- 
fier of intelligent and free creatures, Thou hast 
willed that thus it should be. Thou hast willed 
that besides Thyself, who art infinite happiness 
and absolute perfection, there should exist crea- 
tures capable of sharing Thy happiness and Thy 
perfection. Thou hast created them, and Thou 
hast called them to this divine participation ; and 
as for this it was necessary to create them free 
beings, for they alone would be capable of sharing 
Thy happiness and perfection, and as free beings 



190 



MEDITATION XXtX. 



could sin, and stain themselves with impurities, 
and make themselves every way unworthy of the 
hope set before them, Thou hast provided from the 
stores of Thy infinite power a redemption to 
restore life to beings worse than dead, to raise up 
creatures that had fallen miserably. For this 
Thou hast wrought, God, a wonderful work 
through Thy incarnation, or to prepare for it, Thou 
hast provided that in the midst of the spirits Thou 
didst create, all of whom might fall into sin, there 
should be a pair pure enough to regenerate all 
mankind, the soul of the God-Man, and the soul 
of the immaculate Mother of God — one of which 
we can only say, that it is one with God; the 
other, of which we may say, that without losing 
its liberty it possesses the highest conceivable de- 
gree of purity after that of God. So that beneath 
Thee, God, who art the infinite and uncreated 
perfection, and beneath Thee, Christ, perfect 
God and man, there is at the head, or in the 
centre of mankind, a being whom we may call 
the relative and created perfection. Hence it 
follows that in the order of perfection all that is 
conceivable exists; there is no gap. And not 
only does all perfection and happiness which man 
can imagine exist actually — infinite happiness 
and uncreated perfection ; all imaginable created 
perfection, and all happiness of which a creature 
is capable! but the man who imagines these 
things must at the same time believe that all this 
may be his, and that its possession is offered to 
him. So that he can never imagine anything 
too beautiful or too happy ; and the only fault his 
hope can have is to be too timid. 

Still we do not yet see the whole mystery, 



MEDITATION XXIX. 



191 



beauty and greatness of Christian hope. Let us 
go a step further. If faith, as St. Paul says, is 
the substance of things hoped for, what will hope 
be ? For hope, though less than charity, is greater 
than faith. Is not hope also the substance of good 
things to come? What is the real principle of 
faith, hope, and charity, the divine virtues which 
God only infuses into the soul? Their principle 
is grace. And what is grace, but the beginning 
of our participation of the divine nature ; our first 
entrance on the possession of God? And what is 
this first entrance on the possession of God, but 
the beginning of eternal life, and of sovereign 
happiness? So that Christian hope already holds 
what it hopes for, it holds it in principle, in sub- 
stance, in beginning, in germ, as the doctors who 
follow the Scriptures teach us. 

' 1 We are partakers of Christ," says St. Paul, 
* ' if we hold fast within ourselves the beginning 
of His substance, even to the end." Yes, Jesus 
Christ is in His sanctuary, and this sanctuary is 
our soul, if we always hold fast in ourselves this 
glorious hope, even to the end. It is of this be- 
ginning, and this substance of the life of Jesus 
in man, that St. John says, 4 4 the divine seed 
dwelleth in him." 

But how hold fast this glorious hope, even to 
the end, in the midst of all our toil, weakness, and 
sin? Mary, our hope, help us to know it. 
holy Mother of God, immaculate Queen, show 
us how thou art the Mother of the holy hope, how 
thou art the encouragement, the protection and 
the foundation of hope. 

There are two beautiful sayings of St. Ambrose 
and St. Anselm, which will show us the way: 



192 



MEDITATION XXIX. 



"0 that the soul of Mary," says St. Ambrose, 
' 1 might be in each of us to glorify God, that the 
spirit of Mary might be in us, to rejoice in God I" 

" Yes, she bears us all in her heart," says St. 
Anselm, " as a true Mother." 

" We all dwell in thee, full of joy, holy 
Mother of God," says the Catholic Church. 

But we must believe these things; we must un- 
derstand that though matter is inpenetrable, soul 
is not so. 

There may be a mutual inter-penetration of all 
human souls ; thus the spirit of Mary may pene- 
trate the souls of her children, and all of them 
may be in her, and are in her. 

Through this wonderful union of our souls with 
thine, Mother, thou mayst stimulate, uphold, 
and direct our hope. Thou mayst stimulate it 
by telling us, when God's grace calls us, how 
much better is that which He offers than that 
which we seek. Thou mayst rule it by ever cor- 
recting us when, after having chosen God's side, 
we seek Him where He is not. Thou mayst up- 
hold it steadfastly in us even to the end, whenever 
our soul, wearied with its repeated faults and fail- 
ures, is tempted to lose sight of perfection, and to 
renounce holiness. Then it is, Mother, that 
thou whisperest to the soul of thy child : Be brave, 
be strong, thou mayst still overcome. Holiness is 
still held out to thee, perfection still offered. 
What is more, beloved Mother, sometimes thou 
showest us in sweet inward vision a wonderful 
sight, which is at once our soul itself, and the idea 
which God has of it, and the degree of perfection 
to which He wishes to raise it; and thy funda- 
mental virtues seem lent to it for a moment, and at. 



MEDITATION XXIX. 



193 



the same time something of thy ravishing beauty is 
reflected in it, some feature of thine wherein each 
of us may come to resemble his heavenly Mother. 

Yes, to give us courage and raise our desires 
to heaven, thou showest us our soul for a moment 
transfigured in thine own, and in God ; thou showest 
us the beauty and glory of which we are capable, 
and which is in store for us if we persevere. Who 
has not sometimes fancied he saw his soul dwelling 
in light, in peace, in life, in that beauty which 
comes from wisdom? I know that hell can also 
show us false portraits of the soul, which are suf- 
ficiently flattering to intoxicate pride by their ma- 
licious and guilty beauty, and sufficiently hideous 
to excite the horror and disgust of any one who 
has caught a glimpse of the beauty of holiness. 
These illusions, these perverse pictures, cause a 
momentary feeling of unbounded pride, which is 
followed by a speedy and complete prostration. 
But when thou, O Mother, showest us our souls 
transfigured in the halo of light which God has 
given thee, thou dost but impress on our hearts, 
and engrave on our memories a loving remembrance 
of heaven, a clear and humble knowledge of our 
earthly deformity, and a magnanimous resolution 
to overcome all, that we may wash out our sins 
and regain our glory. 

Thus it is, Mother of souls, that thou dost 
rally our hope, thou who art our hope. If we 
could but understand this truth to the full! 

"I am the Mother of pure love, and of holy 
hope," the Scripture makes thee say. "In me is 
all hope of life and of virtue; he that eateth me 
shall yet hunger, and he that drinketh me shall 
yet thirst." Compare this with what our Saviour 



194 



MEDITATION XXIX. 



says: "Blessed are they that hunger, and thirst 
after justice ; for they shall have their fill;" and 
again : ' ' He that eateth me shall hunger no more, 
and he that drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him, shall never thirst." 

By placing these two passages together, we 
discover something of the mystery of the holy 
communion. No creature can live, without some 
communion with God; but no soul can have 
eternal life, but by the real communion of the 
divinity, the soul and the body of Jesus Christ. 
Now there is, as it were, a preparatory commu- 
nion which gives a heavenly hunger, and there is 
the communion itself which gives paradise ; and 
the soul grows with its appetite for that sacred 
food, which gives life more and more abundantly, 
as our Saviour says. And this growth of appetito 
is nothing but that opening of our heart which 
God ever requires from those who love Him — 
"Open your heart, and I will fill it." 

God, then, ever requires that our heart should 
open itself wider the more life it receives, in order 
that it may receive still more. God gives an 
increase of life whenever a new impulse of hunger 
craves for it; and then we reconcile the two 
texts, ' £ He who feeds on me has still hunger ;" 
and, " He who feeds on me shall never hunger." 
For this heavenly food is of two kinds; one 
increases the hunger and thirst for life, the other 
satisfies all hunger and quenches all thirst. One 
opens the heart, the other fills it ; the first is the 
created wisdom, who says: "He who feeds on 
me, is still hungry ;" the other is the uncreated 
wisdom, which says : " He who feeds on me, shall 
never hunger more." 



MEDITATION XXIX. 



195 



Therefore, holy Mother of God, it is thou 
who givest us, or rather con ve jest to us, this 
heavenly hunger. When we imitate thy humility 
and thy purity, thou becomest the human prepara- 
tion for our substantial communion with God. 
To partake of God is our life and our highest 
good, and thou, by thy humility and purity, art 
the hunger and thirst after God. Therefore thou 
art the hope of happiness and of life ; and if 
Christian life, is all summed up in the Holy Com- 
munion worthily received, if the worthy reception 
depends entirely on our preparation, and if thou 
art our preparation, what place dost thou hold in 
the work of our salvation ? Now I understand the 
pious opinion: " He who loves thee, O Mary, 
cannot perish." It is thou that enlargest our souls, 
and openest our hearts, for the hunger and thirst 
after God ; by thy prayers and thy example we can 
make those aspirations for life, those expansions 
of heart, which invite God to come to us, and 
increase His presence within us, which are the 
hope and the growth of life. Truly, then, 
Mother, thou art our hope. 

When we are united to thy soul and thy spirit, 
and the words of St. Ambrose are fulfilled — 
* 6 May the soul of Mary be in her servants to in- 
crease the presence of God in them ; may the 
spirit of Mary be in her servants, to rejoice in 
<xod" — our soul, united to this great soul, to 
this spirit which soars so high, understands what 
true greatness is, feels its own littleness and vile- 
oess, and is humbled. The moment it enjoys 
this greatness, it sees and feels all possible great- 
ness, the infinite perfections of glory ; and in this 
vision, that which it already has seems nothing ; 



196 



MEDITATION XXIX. 



it desires, and hungers after a more abundant life, 
it is humble, it perceives its littleness, and prays 
that it may increase ; like St. Paul, it forgets 
what is behind, and reaches forward to that which 
is before, and hastens to meet its life. And this 
is hope, that heavenly hope and greatness of soul 
which exclaims : ' ' My soul doth magnify the 
Lord, and my spirit has leaped forth in God," 
(exultavit.) This is the song which ascends and 
shall ascend eternally from the heart of her who 
is our succor and our hope. 

Happy is the soul that bears this song within 
itself — that hears in regions higher than its 
height, and deeper than its depth, the voice of 
hope calling it to more mysterious depths of 
humility, and to more sublime heights of develop- 
ment, beneath the eye of God, which glorifies all 
that it looks upon. 

Mother of hope, in whom all hope is found, 
stimulate, guide, and ever increase in me this 
blessed virtue. Never permit me to acquiesce in 
my misery, or to despair of becoming better; 
never permit me to be contented with the virtue 
I have, however great it may be, or to be satisfied 
with its measure. Ever show me how small it is, 
and ever give me a heart and a mind full of hope 
for higher things. 

And if God himself dwells in me by His grace, 
ever show me, holy Mother, how all too narrow 
is the temple of my soul, and when I have en- 
larged it, still show me how straitened it is; ever 
obtain for me a new hunger, that I may be ever 
fed with new life ; that my heart may ever grow- 
larger, and that the presence of God may ever 



MEDITATION XXX. 



197 



increase in it, as our Lord grew in thee. And 
one day show me my soul transfigured in thee, 
adorned with the halo of thy glory, to wean me 
from the sorrows of my never-ending strife with 
evil, and to restore to me the hope of which my 
sin is ever robbing me. 

Give me that strength of hope which St. Paul 
calls the glory of hope, which lays hold of the 
grace of God, and has no further fear, but weans 
itself from all sorrow, because it knows and feels 
that the fullness of all possible good things is to 
be found in God, and in God's heaven, the Mother 
of Jesus, and of us ; that these good things are 
ours, are in us, and that nothing can rob us of 
them for all eternity. 



MEDITATION XXX. 

Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, hare 
mercy on us. 

And now, Jesus, tell thy beloved Mother to 
forgive us for speaking of her so much more than 
of Thee. She, the humblest of creatures, she 
who seems to have forbidden the evangelists to 
speak of her glory in the Gospels, she who made 
her adopted son, St. John, leave out the Mag- 
nificat, but record Thy mysterious words : ' 1 Wo- 
man, what have I to do with thee?" She, who 
only seeks to annihilate herself before Thee, 
because she knows that a creature is nothing in 
the presence of her Creator, with what eyes does 
this humble Mother behold the honors which 
Catholic piety is ever accumulating upon her? 
Thou knowest, J esus, Thou knowest what she 



198 



MEDITATION XXX. 



does with the glory which Thou wouldst have 
given to her. As her glory grows, she repeats 
Thine own words, and as it were, reproaches Thee 
gently for lifting her up so high — " What have I 
to do with Thee? What is there between Thee 
and me, my son ? What am I, and what art 
Thou? Thou art All, and I am nothing ; it is 
not I that live, but Thou livest in me ; Thou art 
the grace of which I am full, my immaculate 
purity is Thine ; Thou art the glory wherewith I 
am clothed; I am the woman clothed with the 
Sun, and Thou, my Son and my God, art this 
Sun of glory. In praising me ever more and 
more, the holy Church glorifies Thee, my 
Saviour ; I transmit this glory to Thee, I keep 
nothing back, for what have I to do with Thee, 
with Thee who art All, while I, in Thy presence, 
am nothing?" 

Jesus, Lamb of God, who takest away the 
sins of the world, in glorifying Thy holy Mother, 
whom have we glorified but Thee? For who 
made that immaculate purity, who took away the 
sin of Mary before she came into being ? Who 
predestinated the second Mother of mankind, 
their true Mother, to the glory of crushing the 
serpent's head ? Who gave her this power ? 

Thou only, Jesus, Thou who takest away the 
sins of the world, and who workest this wonder 
to preserve it from future sin. Thou didst redeem 
beforehand the Queen of the world from sin, that 
Thou mightest show forth Thy master work of a 
perfect creature, immaculate in her origin, im- 
maculate in all her life, and for all eternity. 

Jesus, suffer us this day to meditate on this 
mystery in Thy nresence ? qr rather tell us Thvself 



MEDITATION XXX. 



199 



how Thou dost take away the sins of the world, 
how the chief and master-piece of Thy divine 
work is Thy immaculate Mother; speak to us 
concerning this mystery some of those words 
which are spirit and life. 

Jesus, ' 'In the beginning, My son, I, the 
eternal Word, with the Father and the Holy 
Ghost, spoke, saying: 'Let us make man in our 
image, after our likeness and as a word of thine, 
My son, is heard by thousands of thy fellow- 
men around thee, this word of Our mouth was 
heard by all the beings whom we ordained to life, 
by all the souls whom I meant to hear it — and 
all who heard it live. 

"For thee, My son, and for every soul of 
man, this word is the life which I give, and 
which I am ever offering thee. This day, this 
moment, I am speaking this word for thee, and 
if thou livest, if thou thinkest, if thou lovest, it 
is because thou still hearest it. If I ceased 
speaking, thou wouldst cease being ; but in this 
simple word of My mouth, thou mayest hear two 
distinct things; thou hearest the word which 
makes thee man, and thou art free to hear that 
which would make thee a child of God ; thou 
hearest that which gives thee thy natural life, and 
thou oughtest to hear that which takes away thy 
sins, and gives thee the life of grace. That 
which I speak, I speak everlastingly ; I speak not 
like thee, by intervals; My words do not die 
away every moment, like thine; My words are 
lasting, are fixed, are eternal, and I no more 
cease pronouncing over thee the word which 
creates and regenerates thee, which gives thee or 
offers thee the two-fold life of nature and of holi- 



200 



3JEDITATION XXX. 



ness, than the sun ceases to enlighten and to 
warm the worlds which revolve around it. 

"But, My son. We never meant that Our 
grand, creative, and sanctifying word should 
remain a single instant without its full effect. 
We made it abundantly true when we said: 'Let 
us make man to our image and likeness not only 
was man made, but he was made in our image 
and likeness. 

"In that word there was that holy creature 
who is the spotless image and the faultless likeness 
of the eternal Model. There was Myself, as 'the 
Lamb sacrificed from the beginning of the world;' 
there was that supreme and perfect humanity, 
which my prophets, in holy Scripture, have called 
created Wisdom ; and this is the spotless pair, 
the new Eve and the new Adam, Tvhich was, and 
which ever will be. the immaculate image of the Fa- 
ther, the word and the Spirit. This is My Blessed 
Mother., and still more, My own humanity." 

The Soul. " Lord, I understand a part of 
that which Thou showest me. I understand that 
Thy divine Word, which makes man in Thy image 
and likeness, gives him life, and offers him 
holiness. To make me in Thy image, is to make 
me a man ; to make me in Thy likeness, is to fill 
me with grace, to sanctify me, to wash away my 
sins. Thy two-fold word ceases not to resound, 
that is to say, Thou ceasest not to give life and to 
offer grace. Thou ceasest not to ward off death, 
and to take away the sins of the world. And as 
it is fitting that Thy word should always have a 
full, perfect, and unchangeable effect, Thou hast, 
by a miracle of Thine almighty power and love, 
&r«a&d a holy and immaculate being, who was, and 



MEDITATION XXX. 



201 



who ever will be, Thy perfect image and Thy fault- 
less likeness. But, speak to us again, Lord." 

Jesus. "0 My son, there are two worlds, 
heaven and earth. I take away the sins of these 
two worlds. Heaven I preserve eternally and un- 
changeably from all sin, and for the earth, the 
abode of sin, I wash away its sin by My Blood, 
that I may bring it back to heaven." 

The Soul. "But, how can this be, Lord?" 

Jesus. ' ' My son, My creative and sanctifying 
word, in Me, who am its source, is eternal and 
simple, but in thy soul, which is the term of its 
operation, is multitudinous and successive, like 
the pulsations of thy life, or the vibrating waves 
of light. But each of these waves, each pulsation 
of thy heart, each vibration of thy voice, is two- 
fold, and is made up of an emission and a return 
or answer from the limit of its operation. Each 
word that I speak, to create and to try to sanctify 
the creature, must be heard, and must receive an 
answer. But, My son, where is the creature 
who always answers Me? dost thou?" 

The Soul. "0 Lord, what dost Thou ask? 
Thou askest me whether I have always followed 
in all things my reason and my conscience ; whether 
I have always followed the light Thou didst give 
me, all the love wherewith Thou didst seek to in- 
spire me; whether I have always corresponded to 
the inspirations wherewith Thou hast inundated 
me day by day, like the light, or like the air, 
which I draw in with each heaving of my breast; 
like the blood which renews my life at each pulsa- 
tion of my heart! Alas, God of my life, who 
speakest to me, who dost inspire me with truth, 
affection, and holiness; to whom I ought ever to 



202 



MEDITATION XXX. 



correspond with love and understanding ; do I not 
pass my whole life without answering Thee, or 
listening to Thee? my Master and my God, 
when have I ever decidedly and fully corresponded 
to Thee?" 

Jesus. "My son, this is thy sin! In the narrow 
bounds of thy sickly soul, which knows not how 
to come to Me, and to go out of itself, thou hast 
contracted the evil habit of listening little, and 
answering less. And these answers, which might 
at any moment of thy life sanctify thee, and gain 
heaven for thee; I wait for them, sometimes for 
long years, sometimes for a whole life, and all 
the while thy soul is dwelling in the land of sleep 
and death. Yet this death of sin do I destroy, at 
thy first true answer to My voice. Mark My 
words: I am ever saying to thee, soul, I create 
thee to Our image, after our likeness; but then 
I wait for thy answer. To be dumb, or to con- 
tradict, is thy sin. But if after I have borne 
forty years thy silence of sleep and of death, thou 
givest Me but one answer, then all thy sins are 
blotted out. 

"If I give thee all these days, all these hours, 
all these beats of thy heart, it is only that thou 
mayst one day say to Me in earnest, Yes my God, 
and that thou mayst be regenerated by the answer 
which I call forth. I have governed the life of 
many a man for a century and more, in order that 
his soul may at last come to hear Me, and give 
Me an answer. Behold the long-suffering and 
the patience of the Lamb of God, who taketh away 
the sins of the world." 

The Soul. 4 4 Therefore, Lord, lengthen the 
life of all men, until they give Thee this answer.'* 



MEDITATION XXX. 



203 



Jesus. "My son, the longer they live the more 
hardened do they become, in the habit of not listen- 
ing. Thou knowest it well. The child answers 
me better than the old man, and this is why I 
gather, like flowers, their innocent souls into My 
garner. In time the heart becomes so hardened 
that I know it will never listen; then there is 
nothing left but to pronounce judgment. 

1 ' But thou canst not understand the greatness 
and the multitude of the means whereby I seek to 
awaken their souls, and to make them answer Me." 

The Soul. "Teach me, Lord, that I may 
understand it." 

Jesus. 1 1 My son, I am intimately present with 
the whole soul, I am in it always, and everywhere. 
I am present when it sins, and I hinder its sin 
from slaying it, and casting it down to hell, by 
upholding it even in the midst of its wickedness, 
which I wash away so far as My infinite power 
can wash it. 

"But thou canst not yet comprehend Me. Sin 
is an infinite evil, for it separates the soul from its 
God, from the principle of its life; and this for 
ever. Through sin a great gulf yawns between 
the soul and its God, which it can no more -pass 
over than it can create itself. By sin the soul 
merits eternal death, and is dead for all eternity. 

"But that which the soul cannot do, its Creator 
can; I can pass over the infinite gulf; I can pass 
over to the soul. 

"Though I am always everywhere present, yet 
when the soul can no longer hear Me, I may be 
said not to be there. I no longer exist for it, I 
am, as it were, divided from it by the infinity of 
My Godhead. But I can pass over the gulf ; and 



204 



MEDITATION XXX. 



by My incarnation I present Myself to the soul, 
and I take its sins upon Me. 

"Then it comes to pass that the soul can hear 
Me ; when I say to it, with a voice both human 
and divine, * Thou art my image and likeness,' it 
can hear Me, and its sins are blotted out. And 
here the Church teaches thee the history of My 
work, and the numberless contrivances of My wis 
dom, to take away the sins of the world. 

"This plan was conceived from all eternity, 
and though simple in My eyes, to thine it has two 
sides. Thou seest My aim, which is to wash away 
thy sins, and to raise thee up to everlasting life. 
But in My eternal wisdom, the existence of the 
God-Man was by itself the end and aim, as some 
of My saints have seen and taught. When the 
Father, the Word, and the Spirit say: 'Let us 
make man after our image and likeness/ their 
eternal will is to give to these words their full, 
eternal and infinite meaning. In their full, per- 
fect, eternal, and infinite meaning their truth is 
fulfilled in Me only, the God-Man and Saviour 
of the world. At the same time, My all-perfect 
and immaculate soul, which is united to Me, so as 
to be- but one person with Me, was the means 
whereby I chose to come again into the world to 
unite Myself with human nature, to descend into 
it and to save it. Nevertheless, the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Ghost, willed that the Son of 
God, God and Man, should be born of a Mother 
like men. And as it was Our will that the words 
which created mankind, should be perfectly and 
infinitely fulfilled in the God-Man, We willed also 
that they should be fulfilled completely, though not 
infinitely, in the creature And thus it was part 



MEDITATION XXX. 



205 



of the eternal plan of My work that another son) 
besides Mine — the soul of the Mother of God- 
should be a perfect and spotless image, and a fault- 
less likeness of the Father,, the Son and Holy Ghost. 
And this soul was the second aim of My work. 
The first was the God-Man, the perfect and infinite 
fulfillment of the creative Word ; the second is the 
Mother of God, the perfect, but finite fulfillment 
of the same Word. All My wisdom is poured 
out on this two-fold master-piece — a work altogether 
worthy of Me, than which no greater is conceivable, 
for on the one hand, it is God, and on the other, 
it is created perfection, the highest conceivable 
after God. 

4 'Now learn, My son, what is an immaculate 
soul. It is a soul which, in that part of its life 
which depends upon itself, as well as upon Me, 
has always given a full response to every vibration 
of My voice. And these vibrations, quicker than 
those of light, must ever have found the soul 
attentive and ready to respond — never has there 
been a refusal or delay. While in that part of 
the soul's life, which depends not upon itself, 
in that depth where neither reason nor free-will 
penetrates ; never has the effect or the impulse of 
sin or satan, directly or indirectly, printed spot, 
or wrinkle, or fault, or evil motion. Never has 
the least movement, whose origin is evil, been 
experienced or allowed a passage through this 
soul, even involuntarily. And this was needful, 
My son, for the slightest movement of evil has 
its eternal consequences, and contributes to form 
the fire of hell, and adds strength and speed to 
the horrible eddies of the fiery lake. In the soul 
which answers Me. I blot out these motions and 



206 



MEDITATION XXX. 



these sins, but it remains an eternal truth, that 
the soul has sinned, whether actually or originally; 
that it is not immaculate, and has not the highest 
perfection after God. There are but two souls 
that have this perfection, two souls that were ever 
immaculate, that of the God-Man, and that of the 
Mother of God. The third aim of My work, and 
of Our creative word, was the assembly of saints 
and of just men, whom I have saved from death, 
by making them hear Me through My incarnation 
or My inspirations, and to whom My words apply: 
* The time cometh when they that are in their 
graves, shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, 
and those who hear it shall live.' 

"In the sin of these souls, there was a bottom- 
less abyss and an infinite evil. My sacrifice and 
the infinite worth of My blood, fills up the abyss. 
I apply the price which takes away sin to these 
men, fallen and dead, to eternal life, as Eliseus 
applied his living body to the child to raise it to 
life. The prophet laid his hands over the child's 
little hands, his body over the child's body, and 
his mouth on its mouth, and breathed his breath 
into it. I do all this, and more ; I mix My flesh 
and blood with their flesh and blood ; My blood 
circulates in their veins, and inwardly and out- 
wardly I apply My whole body to theirs. My 
human spirit is mixed with theirs, My soul with 
theirs, and whilst My soul speaks to their soul, 
and My Spirit to their spirit ; and whilst My blood 
flows in their veins, I make them one with Me, 
and attract them to Me, and for them and with 
them, I never cease to raise towards Myself and 
towards My Father, My soul, My spirit, and My 
body, with their body, soul, and spirit attached to 



MEDITATION XXX. 



207 



Mine. As I became Man by taking a soul aral 
body, and in raising up human nature to My?elf, 
bo I become each one of them, by taking their 
body and their soul for my dwelling-place, that I 
may raise them up to heaven. And these appli- 
cations of My human nature, and through it of My 
divine nature, to each person, are diversified by 
the varied riches of My grace, and by the visible 
forms of the sacraments. 

" And as all My mysteries are eternal, I made 
My inspired disciple call Me, * The Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world.' From the 
beginning, before Adam fell, My blood washed 
and preserved her who was to be My Mother, and 
the Mother of redeemed mankind. 

" The source of sin mounts not up to My throne, 
its rise is far below the throne of Sly immaculate 
Mother, a privilege ineffable in its sublimity, in 
its wisdom, in its far-spread beneficence, in its 
application to her whose consent to her divine 
maternity, and whose merits I foresaw, those 
merits which, by My grace, made her worthy to 
bear her God. 

" This, My son, is the meaning of our 
creative word pronounced at the beginning of time : 
1 Let us make man to our own image and likeness. 9 
Thou seest that this word is fulfilled in an infinite 
degree in Me, the God-Man, thy Saviour and thy 
God ; in a perfect and admirable degree in My 
immaculate Mother, and in a true and admirable 
degree, though less full, in all the just and in My 
saints. And thou seest, as a mystery, indeed, 
though not without some clearness, how Our divine 
word prevents or remedies the falling away of 
man from the likeness of God, and how it pre- 



208 



MEDITATION XXX , 



serves from every stain of sin the pair that re- 
generates the world. Thou seest how, by My 
labors and sufferings, which I took upon Me to 
make My word heard by those who sleep, it blots 
out the sins of the world." 

The Soul. ' ' My Lord and my God, I hear 
Thee, I adore Thee, I love Thee ! But this is 
the cry of my soul, listen to it ! My God, have 
mercy on me ! Lamb of God, wash me from my 
sins, wash away the sins of the world. Blot out 
my past sins, blot out my future sins. Preserve 
us from sin evermore, as Thou didst preserve Thy 
Mother from all sin. Take away the sins of the 
world, and prevent all future sin." 

Lord, Thou hast spoken, and still speakest Thy 
mighty word, which creates us and regenerates us 
to Thy likeness. If I listened to this word, if 
the world would listen, any moment would suffice 
to regenerate my soul and the whole world in light 
and love. But death, which I cannot make up my 
mind to renounce, and to which the world clings, 
death does not hear Thy voice ; and the waves 
of life pass over us, and through us, without 
quickening us, Each new sin, each new degra- 
dation in death, renders my return to life more 
impossible. At least, Lord, let me this day 
make a league with Thee against future sins, mine 
own and those of the world. that the world 
sinned less, Lord, that it were less dead, less 
emptied of Thy presence. that the world would 
cling to the brightness of the doctrine of the im- 
maculate purity of the Mother of all living, to the 
wonderful changes wrought by devotion to her 
who is the Mother of God, the perfect form and 
idea of God, and the faultless realization of the 



MEDITATION XXX. 



209 



Word which created and sanctifies man. And 
here let us not miss the lesson which it most im- 
ports the world to know ; that Thou art the Lamb 
who prevents the sins of the world, and how the 
world's future may be better than its past, more 
victorious over the death of sin, over the infernal 
obstacle to light and love. 

Yes, Jesus, herein lies our progress; the 
progress of the world and of the individual soul. 
Grant, therefore, that the Virgin's virtues and the 
Virgin's views of things may spread more and 
more in the world, through the practical worship 
and hearty and intelligent imitation of the spot- 
less Mother of God. Slay God by the power of 
the Virgin's virtues, which draw Thee towards us, 
Jesus, our life, and for which Thou providest 
when Thou blottest out our sins, may God's pres- 
ence increase in the world, may it live there and 
reign there. May Pie be no longer insulted and 
crucified either in the secret heart, or in the public 
streets, may He be no more despised and trampled 
on in His poor, in His children, in the sick, and 
in the ignorant. 

And I think I see, Lord, that the imitation 
of Thy immaculate Mother, and the devotion to 
her created perfection, is growing, and will grow 
in the Church and in the world. It is Thy will, 
and mankind is making ready for it. Thou 
wiliest that this divine light should be shed more 
bountifully than ever on the last age of the world, 
which will be, I hope, the longest. Thou wiliest 
that it should ever grow in fruitfulness and beauty, 
to wash away and prevent sin. 

Thou wiliest, Jesus, that mankind should 
crowd more thickly to this standard of light ; Thou 



210 



MEDITATION XXX. 



wiliest that they should learn its lessons of under- 
standing, boldness, and hope. Thou wiliest that 
they should learn how God has long ago given 
himself, and that it only remains for man to 
accept and to understand what he has ; how man 
can live in Thee, and give birth to Thee, can add 
Thy blood to his own, Thy mind to his, and Thy 
sacred heart to his heart ; through what channels, 
and by what springs, life, truth, freedom, and 
love come to the soul, and grow within it, and in 
the world ; how the spread of the Virgin's virtues, 
the only ones that can receive God, is the salva- 
tion and the progress of the world; how we can 
and must dispose and rule the earth in justice and 
in truth; how in the regions above the human 
soul there exists, not only the infinite perfection 
of God, which might seem too remote from us, 
but also the perfection of the creature ; yes, in, the 
actual creation perfection is possible ; it exists, it 
lives, it comes to us, it touches us, and by some 
hidden and wonderful connection, we touch it. 
The imagination of man, therefore, can never 
soar too high, man cannot hope too much ; if he 
wants perfection, spotless and faultless perfection, 
it is there. The perfection of created man is 
known by its name, and we know how to com- 
municate with it. If we want more, if beyond 
this immaculate perfection we want a perfection 
that verges towards God's infinity, it is there, for 
we are told that the holy and immaculate perfec- 
tion is Mother of God, and unites God to the 
world, and that God willed to become man in her 
womb to raise up mankind to Himself, and to 
kindle in him light upon light for ever and ever. 



211 



MEDITATION XXXI. 

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant 
us Thy peace. 

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the 
world, aid us in these anxious days, and blot out 
some, at least, of the most terrible consequences 
of our crimes. Quench our wrath, calm our 
hatred, stay our threats, and instead of the sounds 
of war, give us the fruitful stillness of labor. 
Lamb of God, grant us Thy peace. 

Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth, when Thou 
dost ascend into heaven Thou sayest, " My peace 
I leave with you, my peace I give unto you 
and when Thou dost appear in the midst of us on 
fche earth, Thou sayest, " Peace be with you." 

my God, Thou who art peace itself, is it not 
time, now nineteen hundred years after Thy com- 
ing, for peace, the glorious peace of justice, to 
begin its reign in the midst of the Christian world, 
and for the prayer of the Church to be fulfilled, 
which is ever asking for peace among Christian 
princes ? 

" When He is come," says Isaias, " the people 
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and 
their spears into sickles ; nation shall not lift up 
sword against nation, neither shall they be 
exercised any more to war." (Isaias ii. 4.) 

When shall this be, O my God? When shall we 
see the Gospel realized in the life of the nations? 

When shall we see the life of nations multiplied 
by their union, and not neutralized by their wars? 

When shall we see the nations remember that 



212 



MEDITATION XXXI. 



they are co-heirs of heaven, and mem 1 one 
body?* 

When shall we see the rulers become such as 
the Gospel speaks of, who, instead of oppressing 
their people with their extravagance and their 
wars, minister to them in justice and peace? 
(Matth. xx. 25 ) 

Or rather, when shall we see the people open 
their eyes, and rid themselves of the perpetual 
disturbers of the national life, the despisers of all 
government, the sacrilegious breakers of all laws, 
the overthrowers of dynasties and constitutions, 
and at the same time, by a natural consequence, 
learn to refuse to give to the head of the state, 
who can never be more than a man and an indi- 
vidual, the full ower of the sword, of taxation, 
and of speaking, that is the power of regulating 
by himself all men's life, labor, and thoughts, and 
of determining by himself whether the world shall 
have war or peace ? 

When shall we see men understand the truth 
of the two great evangelical laws of history, * ' He 
that takes the sword shall perish by the sword," 
and 4 ' Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess 
the earth?" (Matth. v. 4, and xxvi. 52.) 

When shall we understand that truth, justice, 
and goodness, have each, by itself, a kind of om- 
nipotence, which wrath, war, and blood-shed can 
only lessen ? 

Thank God, the time draws near when men 
shall understand these things. 

Jesus, who takest away the sins of the 
world ; who makest the Christian nations beyond 

* Gentes esse cohseredes et concorporales.— Ephes. iii. 6. 



MEDITATION XXXI. 



213 



comparison purer than the ancient world; who 
gavest them increase of science and reason, for 
the discovery of fresh means of subduing the 
earth, and who hast begun to give them some 
understanding of the excellence of peace ; already 
hast Thou taught them to prize meekness and 
goodness; already in comparison with the barba- 
rism and cruelty of old times, the Christian na- 
tions are as good, as meek, as peaceable as they 
are strong and enlightened. 

Our eyes have seen for well nigh half a cen- 
tury a sight that was never before seen on earth — 
peace becoming a European institution, and war 
becoming, year by year, more difficult, and promi- 
sing to become impossible. And when the last 
great war burst out we witnessed a compact of all 
nations to quench it as soon as possible. And 
even now, when peace has become unstable, we 
behold the nations, events and ideas, all conspiring 
with almost irresistible force to impose peace. 

In these days when spaces are shortened, and 
Europe is, as it were, a single country; when there 
is daily intercourse of the nations with each other; 
when their labor and their wealth are inextricably 
intertwined; when science, ideas, interests, man- 
ners, habits and needs wreathe together all the na- 
tions into one whole — this living and mighty whole 
will not be torn and lacerated. Knowledge, thank 
God, everywhere conspires with the wisdom and the 
love of men to banish war from the bosom of our 
European father-land. 

Nor is this all. History and reason read their 
comments on the Gospel, and show us the weak- 
ness of war and the strength of peace to conquer 
and rule the world. 



214 



MEDITATION XXXI. 



What do you want? You want justice; you 
want to deliver the oppressed. History and the 
Gospel show you that war always increases the 
burden of the oppressed. Now-a-days, no man 
who knows Europe can fail to understand that 
among us, justice, truth, knowledge, discussion, 
reason, opinion, and moral and intellectual efforts, 
are stronger than sword and fire. 

All ye who suffer, and are oppressed, learn to 
put your confidence, not in the sword which ruins 
the cause that adopts it, nor in the poinard, which 
stamps with infamy the cause that tolerates it, but 
in the force of justice, truth and faith, and in the 
quickening fire of the heart of Jesus. 

For oppression still exists among us ; nation op- 
presses nation, and citizens oppress each other. 

Jesus, Thou who didst come to deliver man, 
grant us that ardent love for the oppressed which 
may be called Thy fire, the fire which Thou didst 
kindle upon earth,* and show us at the same time, 
Jesus, that this fire whose triumph is the one 
thing Thou didst desire — is that mighty force 
which is to deliver us by changing all obstacles 
into sources of heat and light. 

my brother, didst thou never feel in thy 
youth that energy of conviction, that heaving of 
heart which seemed able to move the world ? At 
that moment thou hadst a glimpse of the strength 
of justice and of faith ; the sacred fire was kindled 
within thee. By this force, says the Gospel, we 
can move mountains, and nothing is impossible 
to us. (Matt xvii. 19.) 

Why is this? 

* Ignem veni mittere in terram, et quid volo nisi ut accenda 
ur?— -Luo. xii. 49. 



MEDITATION XXXI. 



215 



It is because God is everywhere. God the 
foundation of the world and the support of souls ; 
God who is justice itself, dwells in the midst 
of each soul. Through this central medium man- 
kind are in communion with each other, from one 
end of the world to the other. Through it the 
movements of thought are passed from man to 
man. All created spirits communicate with each 
other in God, who is justice and truth, ever present 
to the spirit and conscience of every man. When 
a man's will is fixed on justice and his thought on 
truth, this thought or will is a motion which is 
passed or propagated like light; it is a wave which 
gathers strength as it goes, which collects force 
from every consciousness, from every law of 
nature, and from God himself, who is the absolute 
force. When many men unite in one will, and 
in one belief, in the light of truth, and in the out- 
spoken honesty of evident and disinterested jus- 
tice, and in the enthusiastic love of virtue, then 
the irresistible impulse of these intelligent and 
free multitudes, who form invisible armies, over- 
turns every obstacle, and governs the world. 

Of a truth, the wrath of man fulfills not the jus- 
tice of God; but the peaceable, patient and perse- 
vering insurrection of the mind; the conscience 
and the heart in behalf of justice is an irresistible 
force, which is now more than ever all-sufficient. 
By this force, the just and the good shall become 
masters of the world, and shall overcome every 
power which resists the justice of God; as where 
St. Peter, with a single word, struck the liars dead, 
or rather, as when Jesus, who is justice itself, 
made the soldiers fall to the ground, by simply 
saying to them : "I am He." 



216 



MEDITATION XXXI. 



This is the force of the present age, to overcome 
the will by justice and the mind by reason, but 
not with sword and fire. This is the holy war of 
the ages to come; this is the consecrated weapon 
of lawful revolutions. 

Jesus, Lamb of God, who takest away the 
sins of the world, grant us Thy peace, that we 
may live under Thy law, in Thy strength, in Thy 
truth, and in Thy freedom. Tell us again that if 
we keep Thy commandments, we shall know the 
truth, and the truth shall make us free. Show 
us that Thy sacred fire is kindled on the earth, 
and that its bright and mighty flame is all-sufficient 
to triumph peaceably over all things. 

But it must be kindled and must shine forth, 
or peace is impossible; and it must be kindled 
soon, or war and revolution are at our gates. 

For if mankind slumbers much longer in false 
security, in thoughtlessness, in a stupid indiffer- 
ence for justice, in a low selfishness, in careless- 
ness of everything but robbery and gain, and in 
the filth of luxury and debauchery, then for fear 
they should stagnate to death, God will once more 
stir them up with revolution and war. 

Be kindled then, sacred fire, and penetrate 
the nations, to lead them by the way of justice, 
faith and knowledge to unity, freedom, and peace. 

Jesus, who takest away the sins of the world > 
grant us Thy peace. 



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